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    How to Combine Two Styles in One Home 

    As seen with our real life customers Emma and Ed, trying to combine two styles can be a challenge – especially if you have different ideas about what looks good. Whether you’re just moving in together or you’ve been trying to tolerate your partner’s taste for a while, once you’ve made the decision to be together every day, you need to figure out a way to make your distinct styles work as one so you can both feel at home.

    Inspired by Emma and Ed’s successful blending of their minimalist Scandinavian and quirky looks, we thought we’d help you tackle this potentially tricky situation, with our favourite tips.

    The ‘how to combine eclectic styles’ essentials:

    • Accept that your things probably won’t match up exactly. The good news is, matching isn’t essential. The bad news is, if you’re all about a consistent look, you’re probably not going to get it (at least at first). All is not lost – your individual style is probably a blend of things itself, so all you need to do is take that a few blends further.
    • But also remember that the likelihood of your styles being polar opposites is low, so there should be somewhere to find a common ground, either in use of colour, materials or function. There will always be something that connects your styles, if you look for it. If you struggle to define your look, delve deeper into what you love and hate so you know which battles to pick and where you can be flexible.
    • It’s a shared space, so both of your styles need to be represented in several places in the room (don’t try and get away with a token piece here and there).
    • Repeating elements (like colour, pattern, texture, and shape) create cohesion, and by spreading two diverse styles out so they overlap completely will give you a fully integrated and blended end product.
    • If you can’t agree on anything else, colour is the best way to bring it together. Remember that a neutral backdrop is very forgiving and can calm the effect of clashing.
    • A gallery wall is a great ally in creating a spectacular display that combines distinct styles – they’re made for mixing and matching different pieces in different frames, and unifying them together. You can read more about how to create a gallery wall here >
    • Open storage is your friend! Like a gallery wall, open storage can provide the structure and sameness needed to unify a whole bunch of seemingly unconnected display pieces. The key to combine two styles is all in the arrangement.
    • Employ the rule of ‘different but the same’ and group items together by finding some commonality between them. Colour, size, texture, theme: find a way to form collections and suddenly your mish-mash of items becomes an intriguing display piece. (This works particularly well for smaller items.)
    • If there’s one thing that you just can’t make blend with the rest of the room, celebrate it as a feature.
    • If one or both of you has a standalone collection, find an eye-catching way to create a display piece from it.
    • To make sure you’re on the same page, talk about and agree on the formality of the room e.g. is this a high-shine high-style entertaining space, or a comfy, casual lounging space? Thinking about how you want it to feel, and how you want to us it is a good building block for pulling a new look together.
    • If you’re not sure where to begin, Pinterest is invaluable. Get looking for any specific features, styles or colour schemes you like, and focus on what exactly attracts you to any pins you save.
    • Create a ‘must have, nice to have, never have’ list and compare notes, so you both know where the boundaries are.
    • If you both have items you can’t bear to part with but the other just can’t stand them, see if you can come to a trade-off agreement. You keep this if they can keep that, and so on.
    • But beware – if trading off is a touchy subject because you really can’t stand something, you might be better off buying new pieces together.
    • Finally, and most importantly – let it go. You love this person enough to spend day and night with them, so does it really matter if you don’t like their lampshade?