The interior of your home is filled with personal mementos, favorite chairs, colors you love and fabrics that are pleasing to the touch. You enjoy your home, but you're also aware your home is lacking a distinctive look, a style that reflects who you are.

Perhaps you've shrugged off that feeling by telling yourself your taste is eclectic, using the word to mean you cannot define what your style is, but you know what you like.

Chances are you can find your personal style in the jumble of colors and fabrics and furnishings that fill your home. You just need to sort through the chaos and find a cohesive interior design scheme.

Start with your accessories. Gather all your pictures and paintings, your wall art and put them in one place. Next, gather all your vases and bowls, your knick-knacks and whatnots and lay them out on the kitchen table.

Sort them out, putting the bowls together, the vases together, figurines together and so on. Now do the same for your wall art. With these, group by theme or subject as well.

Now go from room to room, notebook in hand, and take note of which furnishings in the room you like and which you wouldn't mind disposing of. Include not only furniture, but area rugs, window treatments and bedding as well. Make note of the style and color of each of the items.

For example, you love the old wooden rocking chair with the chintz seat cushion, the ruffled blue bed skirt, the green loveseat with the simple lines and the floral area rug. You don't like the brown couch with the high camel back, the vertical blinds in the family room or the pink tiles in the kitchen.

Now go back to your accessories and wall art. Pick out your one favorite thing from each group.

By now you should see a pattern emerging. You prefer greens and blues, floral and small patterns, and furniture with simple lines. Your favorite accessories are a ceramic bowl, a painted vase and a landscape painting of an old house by the sea.

You are beach style person. You would like your home to be light and airy, painted in the colors of the sea. You want simple furnishings and pretty patterns and coziness. Your style has been there all along; you just had to find it.

The easiest way to find out your decorating style is to assess your belongings and ferret out your favorites. The things you love reflect who you are and you want your environment to reflect who you are. Evaluating the items to which you are attracted will help you see the patterns, the colors and the textures that make up your personal style.

Remember, though, that a personal style means bringing your own flair to an established interior design scheme. Visit your local library or bookstore and study the books and magazines on design. Pay close attention to the beach and cottage styles to get an idea of how they are put together. But you needn't copy them; just get an idea, and then add your own flair. Then your home will come together and reflect your own personalized style.

Learn more about this author, Shelly Mcrae.
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