Everyone, for the most part, has their own style. Whether that is adopted or even copied from others, or it is truly individually curated, tastes evolve both as a society as well as separately. This can happen due to a number of factors —some internal and some external. Let’s take a quick look at some of the different aspects that go into one’s taste, and how that might change over time.
How Taste is Formed:
Your taste and your style started developing once you have a little more agency in your life, usually in your middle school and high school years. This is when you experiment, begin to see what others like, and hone in on the styles that you identify with most. These are formative years, not just for your social life or education, but for taste as well.
Your Environment – It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that the space around you as you are growing up will affect your preferences, whether in a good or bad way. Maybe you grew up in a beautiful Scandinavian-style home, so you love clean and airy spaces with natural elements because they remind you of home. Conversely, maybe you had a hard time growing up in a rustic farmhouse-style home, so you reject that aesthetic due to the bad memories. Either way, your surroundings can have a huge impact on what you enjoy as you get older.
Your Family and Friends – Everyone has that cool older family member that we can attribute some of our taste to. Whether it was a cousin who had the coolest outfits or a parent with the best music taste, there is usually an older figure in our lives we can credit for our interests. This can extend to interior design because these interests can translate into styles or features. Maybe that cool cousin wore gothic clothing, so you have a fondness for dark upholstery and stained glass windows. Maybe that fun parent with the awesome music taste showed you how to use records, so now you have an impressive record collection you want to display. The people we surround ourselves with, especially when growing up, heavily impact who we are/become.
What you see – Okay, this one is a little obvious maybe… but it’s true! If any of you were like me when I was younger, I loved looking at HGTV, Zillow, or really anything that was home-related. This really shifted my interests and personal taste. It can also just be going through life, though, like seeing a cool restaurant or coffee shop, or looking at furniture in a space you’re in that you like. With the internet, too, there are endless places to browse interior design inspiration to figure out what you like.
Social Media – This is a huge one, especially for newer generations. Whether it is interior designers on their own socials, content creators doing house tours, or huge corporations like AD making content of their own, if you want to explore different tastes, it takes almost no effort at all.
“Best Practices” – As with anything relating to style, there are “rules of thumb” that can help anyone starting out learn how to create spaces to their taste. Things like not mixing too many patterns or recommended color scheme formats (analogous, complementary, monochrome, etc.) can help you learn how to follow the rules of design, and then eventually how to break those rules in a way that is effective and aesthetically pleasing.
How Taste Evolves:
Even if your taste remains similar throughout your life, it is bound to change based on what you go through and what you experience. This can look like completely changing your style to something super different (think rustic to hyper-modern), or it can be more of a shift within something similar (modern to mid-century modern). Either way, your taste is destined to change as you change as a person.
Trends – Some of us may like to think we are “trend proof”, but in actuality, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a trend, whether it is just for the duration of the trend or after society has shifted onto something else. Mid-century modern patterns went out of style and were considered “dated” for more than 30 years, but they have recently made a huge comeback and are loved by the masses again. Trends are cyclical, and as long as you aren’t creating unnecessary waste or purchasing fast-furniture, trends are fun!
Social Media – Just as social media can form our taste, it can also shift it or flip it on its head. You might have seen a ton of minimalism as you were growing up, and you thought that was the coolest style you’d ever seen, but then all of a sudden, you come across an interior designer who enjoys maximalism, and you realize that maybe you weren’t as minimalist as you thought. This is an extreme example, but it could be as subtle as you not knowing you could make wood-paneled walls look good until you see your favorite DIYer is doing it, and now that’s all you can think about.
Your Experiences – As you buy furniture for yourself and build your home around your taste, you might realize that the fabric you thought was perfect doesn’t look as great in person or doesn’t make sense with the rest of your things. That is an internal experience you may have that alters your preferences. Alternatively, there can be an element of external factors as well. Maybe you painted your room a color you thought would look nice, but several guests have made comments about how it’s too dark or too in-your-face, and now all of a sudden you realize it wasn’t the right move. I’m not saying you should let your guests dictate how your home looks (it’s your home, and why are they commenting on it???), but it can nonetheless affect your taste.
Your Lifestyle – Similar to your experiences, your lifestyle might dictate your taste to a certain degree, too. Maybe you love leather, but you have cats that scratch on your furniture no matter how hard you try. Most people will not get rid of their pets to save their couch, so the logical thing to do is to purchase a couch with a fabric that is pet-friendly. Maybe you love the look of airy, sheer light filtering curtains, but you realize you can’t sleep through the night without blackout options. Your style can also shift out of necessity rather than solely for aesthetics.
The Takeaway:
At the end of the day, your taste is how you outwardly express your interests, feelings, and intentions. Just as our opinions shift as we move through life, our style and aesthetic do as well. While this all can apply to interior design, it can also honestly apply to any part of your life. Life would be boring if we all stayed the same; change is necessary and the spice of life!
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