The 3 interior decor mistakes we made when we moved into our first home – learn from my errors so you don't fall into the same trap

Content creator Lucy Kalice is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on cleaning, home decor and making the most of small spaces. See the rest of her articles here.

It’s been four years since my partner Sam and I bought our first home together…and haven’t those four years flown by! I remember it like it was yesterday when we picked up the keys and we went inside the our new home for the first time. It felt so empty and quiet but we were so excited to make it our own.

We didn’t need to do any structural work to it but we did need to furnish the whole place and decorate, aka do all the fun stuff! I was very adamant that we were to live in the house for at least 6 months before decorating in order to get a feel for the space. And I’m so glad we did that because if I’d have decorated the house before we moved in I definitely would’ve picked the wrong paint colours and had to redo the whole thing.

And although I stuck to my guns with that, there are many mistakes we did make and I want to share them with you all as I think they apply to every home, not just your first home.

1. Not making my home work for me, instead of the previous owners

One of the hardest things I found about decorating and furnishing our home was not copying what the previous owners did. We ended up copying the layouts of some of the rooms just because we had seen them like it, rather than actually thinking if we could make the spaces work better for us. We’ve now changed things around and found what works for us, but it took us a while to realise we could actually do things differently.

Don’t just use a room as a spare room just because the previous owners did - you wouldn’t keep a nursery if you didn’t have a child and this is how you should approach each room. We’ve changed the nursery into an office because that’s what works for us.

It’s your house, your space and you should use it how you see fit, not how the previous owners or tenants saw fit.

2. Decorating a room based on one item without thinking of the rest

Our first big purchase was our sofa in our kitchen. We bought it before we had decorated the space so we bought it in the colour grey as we thought it would go with everything. About 6 months later we ended up painting and decorating the space and had to do it based on the colour of the grey sofa. Do I hate the grey sofa? Not exactly (I hate the colour not the sofa). But do I wish we had properly planned out the space? Yes.

What we should’ve done is made a moodboard for the space so we knew what we wanted the space to look and feel like. Instead, we created the space around what matched the sofa. Decorating and furnishing a room should go hand in hand.

3. Panic buying furniture instead of waiting to find the right pieces

When we moved into our house we had very little money to spend on furniture, which turned out to be a good thing because we had to wait and save. This meant that most of our purchases were very thought out, however there were a few things that we rushed to buy because we felt we need them. One example is our bedside lamps. We didn’t have bedside lamps for about two years and then one day we were fed up and went out and bought some lamps from a supermarket.

But guess what? I hate them. First of all the lampshades always sit wonky which really irritates me. And I also don’t like the look of them! I need to replace them and buy some new lamps but this time I will be taking my time to research and find the right set of lamps!

Even when it comes to furnishing and decorating, slow and steady wins the race!