Find your style with Natalie Walton!

Style: The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home is a timeless interiors book that shows you how to transform your living spaces using what you own and love. While designing can be a big investment, styling allows you to elevate your spaces with what you’ve already got. Let writer and stylist Natalie Walton show you how!

Today, we’re featuring an extract from this new book that’s all about finding out what your personal interiors style is. Read on …

Natalie Walton

What’s Your Style?

How would you describe your style? It’s not always an easy question to answer. Yet it guides so many of the choices we make in life. Sometimes we rely on previous experience or gut instinct. But when we have a clear understanding of our own personal style, not only is it easier to make daily decisions in our home and life, we can also make better choices. It helps us create in a way that feels good, rather than being distracted by other people’s style and what is meaningful and personal to them. The more we’re in tune with our own style, the less likely we are to feel overwhelmed or to struggle with which direction to take.

Style is a means of expression. It’s a way of sharing how you feel about yourself and what’s important to you—from the way you dress to how you create your home. It’s up to you to focus on what brings joy, enhances your surroundings and helps you to live your best life. And, if you only have this one life to live, why would you opt for something that didn’t enhance your every day? Why would you want to be anything other than yourself? Granted, it’s often easier said than done. But in this age of self-awareness, let’s celebrate what makes us unique, as well as what brings us together.

Yes, sometimes it takes courage to be your true self. It takes resolve to stand up for what you like, especially if it’s contrary to popular opinion. Doubts can start to creep in. ‘What if I get it wrong?’ Or, perhaps more to the point: ‘What if others don’t like it?’ Maybe, instead, we should ask, ‘Why does that matter?’

That’s where the art and science of styling comes in. It’s a way to make any arrangement look more pleasing to the eye. When we know how, we can make the most of objects we love and enhance our experience at home in the process.

But first, let’s be clear about your personal style.

In many ways your style can be summed up by a simple idea. It’s where three key elements come together: your story, your feelings and your values.

Notice the materials and colours that resonate most with you on an emotional level. This is key to unlocking your personal style.

STORY

Everyone’s style is different because we have all had different journeys. Take a moment to consider the paths you have taken. Your style is partly informed by how and where you grew up and the different types of homes you lived in. You might have moved towns, cities, even countries—all of this informs who you are today. Even if you’re repudiating and choosing to be something different from your past.

Your style can also be influenced by places you have travelled to and people you met along the way. You might have visited the same beach house every summer as a child, and this experience could have infused you with a level of familiarity and comfort for that style of home. It’s why we have such varied responses to different interiors. We’ve all lived different lives.

Now consider your own family’s style, the types of homes you grew up in and how they were decorated. They are going to have a big impact on your own story and style. This can work in a number of ways: you can be drawn to a particular style because it feels familiar, comfortable, perhaps even safe; or you can go against the style that was the backdrop of your formative years. Sometimes this can alternate between generations. The style of your family home might become the foundation of your own, but your journey informs subtle shifts. Or you might reject the material, aesthetic and moral choices of your family home and create a new and unrecognisable visual vocabulary.

My mother grew up in communist Poland and has an aversion to anything rustic. She associates it with the struggles that many people in her country experienced when she was young. After moving to England, she embraced antique lacquered furniture, and a lot of gold and plush velvet. However, I have gone the other way. A few years ago a friend who grew up in Poland visited my homewares shop Imprint House, which was stocked with handmade millet brooms and raw timber stools with handwoven seats, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is the Polish peasant style!’ It was a revelation that I had inadvertently embraced the visual language that my mother rejected.

My personal style has been informed not only by my early childhood in England—visiting historic homes, crumbling castles and stone cottages—but also by summer holidays spent in French country farmhouses. To this day, I am drawn to the humble simplicity of time-worn stone and raw timber for no other reason than that it feels good. These materials are not necessarily better than others, but I gravitate towards them for the emotional response they evoke. Working on an interiors magazine where I was mentored by an editor who championed the understated beauty of natural raw materials also left its imprint. Similarly, my later years growing up in Australia—with its bright light, big sky and fuss-free interiors—have meant that these elements also feel like they are part of my DNA. Light is an essential ingredient of any space I want to inhabit.

Your story is a confluence of the people, places and events that have had an impact on your life. What gives you a strong feeling of emotional connection? When you think back over your own journey, especially in relation to homes and style, what are the elements that have most resonated? What has made you feel good? What did you love? What has stayed with you through the years?

Your story is as unique as you are. When you create from your own personal viewpoint, you create authentically. You create a style that no one else has.

FEELINGS

Your style is also about how you respond emotionally to what you see. Again, we all respond differently because we’ve all had different experiences. What an object means to you will not be the same as what it signifies to me, or anyone else. It’s important to focus instinctively on what resonates and to spend time making sense of your emotional reaction. The more you tap into your instincts, the better you will understand your own personal style.

Connecting with your feelings also helps you to appreciate someone else’s style while acknowledging that it’s not yours. It wouldn’t feel right in your home. Just as you can admire how someone else curates their personal clothing choices but know that you wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing their pieces, the same is true of what we select for our homes. The aim is to create a space that feels aligned with you and your life.

To explore what’s true for you, follow your heart but cast your net wide. Go beyond the usual suspects. Watch your favourite films anew. Get specific about what it is that you’re drawn to. Look at typography, album covers, art exhibitions, fashion photography, cars, sailing boats, ceramics, shoes and more. Notice the details and what resonates with you. Is it the form, colour, texture or the juxtaposition of different materials, eras or ideas? What excites you about an object or idea? Write it down. Don’t overthink it. Go with your first emotional response. The words you use to describe what inspires you are the building blocks to understanding your own style. Patterns and themes should be starting to emerge. You’re gaining clarity and those words will be your guide.

Other patterns might start to emerge, too. Notice the overall colour and material palette, as well as the mood. Are you gravitating towards dark and dramatic images, or light and airy? Do you prefer refined or rustic? Or a combination? Note what resonates, how it makes you feel, and if it evolves over time. The more you engage with the process and create awareness, the more you will discover the underlying foundation of your style. It is the core that stays with you over the years. It is the part that feels most you.

VALUES

What you value determines what you prioritise in an interior. And this comes into focus when you’re sourcing or curating displays. What do you gravitate towards? This can relate to the way something has been made—such as handmade or precision-engineered—and how it has been finished. An object can be handcrafted but its maker’s mark can be almost imperceptible. Another piece might deliberately enhance the joins, the imperfections. Notice what elicits a response in you.

What you value can, of course, relate to the cost of an item and its perceived value. Do you prefer objects that are bespoke, limited-edition or exclusive in some way? What do you feel that says about you and your home? Is it a priority? Do you prefer to wait and save for a one-off piece? The reverse can also be true—you might feel uncomfortable being in possession of such an object, knowing its market value. Rather than bringing joy, it could create discomfort or distress: you might worry about children or guests sitting in a designer chair or on an expensive sofa for fear of it marking. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to what you value, but always pay attention to what is true for you.

Also, the type of home you’re creating can have an impact on what you embrace. If you’re furnishing a holiday home for rental, it might not be practical or prudent to include irreplaceable pieces. However, it might also be a way to attract your ideal guests. Everything is relative.

You might value your time and prioritise objects or displays that are low maintenance. One person might regard dusting as a worthless task, while another sees it as an opportunity to connect with, care for and admire what they treasure.

Your time might be important in other ways. Perhaps you don’t want to replace floral displays every week, or waste hours looking for a new rug because your current one looks worn or dated. Or you might enjoy the experience of a weekly, seasonal or occasional change and believe that it is completely worth the time and effort.

Choose what’s important to you. But be aware of your choices, knowing that they inform your style and how you feel in the home that you create. And remember that the decisions rest with you.

SIGNATURE STYLE

Style is not static. It’s as fluid as you are. It ebbs and flows with the seasons and over the course of your life. You can acquire new tastes and your style can be informed by new travels. How you express what’s most important to you will adapt to the various homes and projects you take on over the years. Your style is the filter you use when making decisions about what you welcome into your home. It is woven with all the threads of who you are, allowing you to express yourself authentically.

Although your style is fluid, its threads rarely change. They are at the core of your essence. You know them because they feel right. They inform the decisions you make in an instant, no questions asked. They are different for each person, but it is worth asking yourself what is non-negotiable for you when it comes to creating a home. Alternatively, when you reflect on your style journey so far, what has never changed? What has been constant and stood the test of time? This might relate to colour, material, provenance or form. Pay attention to these threads in your homes and life—this is your signature style.

If it helps, consider the threads that are consistent in the work of artists, musicians, fashion designers and other visual artists. Every exhibition, album or collection that they create is different, but a signature style is perceptible through their body of work. The creatives who have the biggest impact embrace their unique viewpoint of the world. Any attempt to replicate someone else’s style is a poor imitation.

Ensure that what is uniquely you is at the heart of what you create. And that your home is a portrait of you.

—This is an edited extract from Style: The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home by Natalie Walton, published by Hardie Grant Books.

Style

The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home

by Natalie Walton

Style: The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home is a timeless interiors book that shows you how to transform your living spaces using what you own and love. While designing can be a big investment, styling allows you to elevate your spaces with what you’ve already got.

This book is at once beautiful and practical...

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