Decoration Tips for Making Your Home More Personalized

Your home is where you spend a lot of time every day. There should be plenty of ways that it reflects who you were, who you are, and who you want to be. Here are some fun and simple decoration tips for making your home more personalized.

Unique Artwork

Your choice of artwork says a lot about you. It speaks to the styles, colors, and moods that you admire and want to promote. Dark scenes and grayscale colors express a different personality than neon colors and absurdly photoshopped scenes. When you think about the artwork you want to display, consider the tone you want to set with visitors and yourself. If you have any personal works, put them up in noticeable places and proudly show off who you are.

New Paint

New paint on a door or wall can really add personality to your home. In fact, adding a new color to a whole room can make a big difference in how you experience where you live. When thinking about painting parts of your house, take your time in deciding the color you want to put up. Think about the color scheme you have established in your home already and how you want the hues to match. Also, start with small areas and don’t look to finish all your painting in a day—the best results come from several coats and patient precision.

Sentimental Items

One of the easiest ways to make your home your own is to display sentimental items. Think about hanging a special dish or family heirloom to hold on to treasured memories. If you are looking to display a family tree, think about crafting one as a family or finding a customized family tree service. Also, putting out family photos is a must—you want people to know and see the faces of those you love.

Though there are many other ways to add flavor to your home, these decoration tips for making your home more personalized are great places to begin. You can also think about adding a special scent to your home or putting out seasonal décor. It all begins with your creativity and personality.

Unique Photo Hanging Ideas for Your Wall

Showcasing your favorite photos is a beautiful way to customize your home design. For a genuinely artistic display, look beyond the photos you hang and consider how you hang them. Getting creative with your photo displays is a fantastic way to make your house a home and personalize your living space.

Here are some of the best unique photo hanging ideas for your wall.

Create a Clock with Photos

One of the most original ways to decorate a large, open wall is with a custom clock. You can get a clock kit on Amazon and mount it into your wall for a stunning (and useful) display. Instead of opting for decals or paint to signify the time, use twelve photos in place of numerals. 

The options are limitless when choosing which images to use. You can take a seasonal approach and select your favorite image from each month of the year. Alternatively, you could choose an annual family photo capturing how your family has changed and grown over the past twelve years. Another option is to consider what the different times represent for you. 12 o’clock could be a photo of you and a friend sharing lunch at your favorite restaurant. Bedtime could be a fun pajama photo.

Lean Your Photos

Leaning photos and artwork add a casual-yet-luxurious feel to your interior design. This is an excellent option if you want to pick your favorite family photo to be commissioned as a painting on canvas and accent it with smaller pieces. 

There are a few options for leaning your photos without worrying about damage. The first is to install small shelves with a lipped edge to keep your photos in place on the wall. Alternatively, you can stack them on a side table and use the extra space to add to the tableau. Finally, if you have a large, unused space, you can set them on the floor to lean against the bottom of the wall for a more nomadic, transient feel. 

Instagram-Inspired Photo Grid

There’s something clean and crisp about the iconic 1x1 squares that Instagram made famous. Capture this same aesthetic on your wall by creating a grid that you can add to over time. Print your favorite photos on square blocks for a 3D effect, and be sure to hang them with perfectly even spacing.

This unique photo display works exceptionally well on small, thin walls that are challenging to decorate— the top of the stairs in a split entry, for example.

Small Photos within an Empty Frame

Rather than expanding and framing your photos, leave them as single, small prints. Instead, invest in a large, ornate frame and remove the backing to hang on your wall. Then, use an adhesive to mount your unframed photos in a collage style within the large frame. This unique photo hanging method allows you to showcase your favorites and easily swap them out over time

Create a Geometric Web

Geometric shapes and accent pieces have been a hot interior design trend in recent years. You can capture the essence of this trend by creating your own geometric web using twine or golden craft string and tacks or finishing nails. 

It can be helpful to outline your preferred pattern before putting holes in the wall. Sketch it on paper then add dots to the wall using a pencil as a template. Alternatively, you can take a random approach and see what spontaneous artwork appears. 

You need to think outside the frame hanging your photos in a unique and creative way. Try one of these five techniques to display your treasured images the way they deserve.

Interview - Isabelle Dervaux, Family Photo Curator

Photo Credit: Tamara Gillon

If a photo is worth a thousand words what happens when you have thousands of photos? Most if not all of our clients ask us what to do with their photos. First, we want to get them all together and store them safely (not in a hot attic or wet garage) and then we can decide what “action” applies to the photos. For some simply keeping them safe is the next and final step but for some other ideas we spoke with Photo Organizer Isabelle Dervaux.

What do you do for your clients?

I help families make sense of the tens of thousands of photos they accumulate over time and create systems that keep them organized. We now take more than 3–5,000 photos per year. Those photos pile up, and given enough time can cause a certain amount of what I call digital anxiety. So you could say I also relieve them of that anxiety while I help them make meaningful projects from the pictures they love.

How did you get started?

It actually started as I began organizing my own family photos when we moved from San Francisco to New York. It was difficult at first to find all of those pictures—scattered among boxes of print photos and digital photos on hard drives, old laptops, and even thumb drives—and once all the photos were in a single location, to not get overwhelmed by hundreds of scans or entire collections that had been duplicated by accident! But there were also moments of joy, like discovering the digital photos of a weekend camping when the kids were young that I thought were lost and now miraculously appeared.

I developed my own methods to get through all the road-blocks and when finished with several projects, felt a real sense of accomplishment as well as a weight lifted from my shoulders. I realized other people must be facing the same issues with their own family photos that I had faced and started working with others to help them organize and find joy in their own photo collections.

If someone is interested, what is the process?

First, we schedule a free 30-minute phone consultation. We have a conversation about what’s important: do they want to organize their digital collection to make photos easier to find? Are they looking to design family albums for their young children? Are they concerned about boxes of old family pictures gathering dust? Once we’ve determined the challenges they’re facing, we set priorities and goals and I recommend a strategy that suits their needs.

I like working side-by-side with my clients—I often work at their homes, so we can share a more detailed view of the family, who the relatives are and what events are most important. We work in manageable chunks, usually once a week over the course of a month, but occasionally for three or more months if we’re dealing with a larger print collection or bigger project.

When tackling a digital photo collection, we start by tracking down every device and storage system the pictures may be found on. Once we’ve gathered and moved the photos to one place, we find a strategy that best suits the client and start organizing and curating their collection with a concrete step-by-step action plan. I teach my clients just enough tech shortcuts and insights to give them the confidence and tools they need to continue organizing their photos, and empower them to make beautiful slideshows and albums on their own.

What makes you different?

Beyond organizing their pictures and sorting out years of photos in a systematic way, our work together also becomes an opportunity to teach my clients about photography and design. I come to this work through a long career as an illustrator, and I love to share the same principles with my clients that I taught in my illustration class at Parsons School of Design. When we find great photos in the course of our work, we analyze what makes them so good—the light, the emotion, the composition, for example—so they can then go on to recreate those same conditions again, on their own. When my clients learn how to recognize their best photos, they also learn how to take better photos, and that reduces their need to edit later on. So the benefits of what I teach my clients extend far beyond the actual time I spend with them.

What is the storytelling aspect of photo organizing?

I’m always on the lookout for engaging, strong images that will provoke conversations and foster deeper connections between family members and friends. Photos are a means of communication. I teach my clients to really look at and read their images rather than just viewing them as one-off snapshots. The way images are edited, grouped and sequenced has a big impact on a photo album. When making an album, you’re making it for yourself, but you’re also creating it for others to view. That means creating a story arc and giving context to the time period, the people in the photos, and information that will keep the viewer hooked—you want them to keep them interested and turning the pages without yawning!

Can you recall any projects that stood out or were especially exciting—or challenging?

I once helped a client find a year’s worth of photos she thought she had lost, including pictures of her daughter as a newborn through her first birthday. I was so happy to help a mom get her daughter’s first year back!

Going through photos can be especially difficult if you’ve recently lost a close family member or friend. I have helped soften the process for clients who want to honor the memory of those who are gone—together we work on finding the most expressive pictures, and create photo stories by which to remember their loved ones.

On a lighter note, I work with many families who travel all over the world. I have gone to virtually every continent through my work, and I love discovering new places as if I were there.

Interview - Artkive

Many of our clients have children at home and a common question we get asked is, what do I do with my kid's artwork? We turned to Jedd at Artkive for one possible solution.

For the busy parent, what is the easiest way to explain what Artkive is?

Artkive solves the problem of what to do with all the art and school work kids bring home. Parent feel bad throwing it away and it usually ends up stuffed in a box. With Artkive it’s easy to turn all those memories into beautiful keepsake books by using the Artkive app and doing it yourself or the Artkive Box service where we professionally photograph it all for you.

What is the Concierge/ARTKIVE BOX service?

For parents who don’t want to Artkive themselves, the Artkive Box is a great solution. We’ll ship you a box to fill with your art. Use the UPS shipping label we provide to send it all back to us and we’ll then professionally photograph, edit, tag, and load all the art to your account. One of our designers will create a book proof for your review and when you’re happy, the book will be printed and shipped to you.

What are products one can create from the saved artwork?

Artkive images can be turned into books, calendars, beach towels, aprons, mugs, puzzles and more.

My child doesn't just have flat paper art, but large sculptures and over-sized posters, how does that work?

If using the Artkive Box, depending on the size of the art, you can either carefully wrap and ship it to us, or you can take pictures of the art and load them directly into your Artkive account to be combined with the art you send us.  You can also just email us pictures you’ve taken and we’ll take care of the rest.

Does someone at Artkive inspect the photos to identify the next Picasso?

Millions of pieces of art are loaded into Artkive so we’re not looking through them for the masterpieces, but you never know which young artist will turn into the next Picasso, Rembrandt or Basquiat.  Imagine if Picasso’s mom had been able to use Artkive to store his childhood art!

I assume Artkive is a play on the word Archive, does anyone offer other thoughts on the subject?

Nope - people do seem to like the name as it tells you exactly who we are and what the company does.