BEAUTIFUL THINGS
My sweet three-year-old helps me pick out fresh flowers at the grocery store for our kitchen counter. He loves the neon artificially colored bouquets - you know, the ones with the white daisies dyed blue, lime green, orange, pink, etc. all wrapped in one. A couple weeks ago, he opted for a beautiful bouquet of red roses (they were on sale, I don’t have a “roses every week” kind of fresh flower budget) and while I loved looking at those beauties throughout the week, he loved them because they were red - like Lightning McQueen from Disney Pixar’s Cars. And while I like Lightning McQueen as much as the next mom, I am not selecting my flowers based on the four-time Piston Cup Champion.
The next time we got flowers, I was feeling positive about the selection because we had landed on roses last time, so I thought we would score another beautiful (to me) bouquet. He selected a small boquet of sunflowers and I was pumped. As I offered one of the bouquets to my son as a supporting filler flower selection, he quickly said no, and wanted the artificially colored daisies again. My brain panicked as I imagined the sunflowers next to the neon blooms. I asked why we couldn’t get the one I had picked out, and he said it was because there were pink flowers in it - and there were no pink racecars in Cars. We paused for a second while I tried to think of one, and coming up empty handed, I agreed that there were no pink racecars. I asked then how he thought about the plain bouquet of greenery - and thankfully, the cringe-worthy Chick Hicks character sports a lovely shade of green, and so therefore, my son granted the selection worthy, and I ended up with sunflowers and greenery on my counter for the next week.
While this scenario made me giggle afterwards, it reminded me of how everyone finds different reasons and opinions for things they find beautiful. I loved the roses becuase they were elegant, smelled divine, and it made me feel fancy. My son, however, just needed to know the flowers had SOME connection to his beloved movies, Cars, Cars 2, and Cars 3. Ka-chow!
There is a lot of truth to the variety of beauty in residential interior design. I found in commercial design it was often a default to the company’s brand. Every decision needed to have a reason for selection based on their marketing, logo, brand colors, mission, etc. In residential design though, families don’t often come prepared with a brand package. Their selections and color preferences all come from their personal lives, lived experiences, and associations with various aspirations.
One client might love bright bold colors, while another may want to stay completely neutral. Sometimes it’s their idea of what the design portrays, sometimes it’s to coordinate with their favorite artwork, and sometimes it’s because they want to make a statement and they want to make it loud. But in every case, it’s complicated, and the goal of the design is to share a part of their story, a part of their soul, and to create a place that they feel “at home” when they walk in.
That’s why I like working with clients on their homes. It’s a mystery, a puzzle, to uncover what experience they are longing for in their home. They may know they want a couple things a certain way, and just need me to fill in the gaps to make it all cohesive. Or, they just know what they like when they see it, and I get to write the story on why and how we will get there. The best part is though - your home is YOURS. And the best-designed ones are those that were curated with intentionality (even with hand-me-down furniture) towards a common goal. The homes with personality and love are the ones that look beautiful even if they are a mis-matched eclectic collection - because those physical pieces are what represent the complicated, amazing, humans that live there, who are all unique, irreplaceable, and made in the image of God. All those random puzzle pieces then equal a home. A wonderful place, that when created intentionally, and with beauty, is then the wonderful home that is yours. The little domestic church that God gifted you with to know Him, and love your family in it’s walls.
So don’t strive for a home design that tells someone else’s story - strive for something that represents YOU and your family, and your mission. Even if that means displaying a bouquet of neon flowers because it brings your son joy to have racecar flowers, and while it isn’t my first pick, the reason brings me joy too.
Chat soon,
