If you’ve got a keen sense of style and you love to follow fashion, it’s not just yourself you can work your magic on. The place you live can be a showcase for your style and an extension of your personality too.

Interior design is just fashion for homes, so clothing and décor go together very well. If you want a new challenge, or the chance to expand your repertoire, take a look at how you could transform the place you live, so it’s a worthy representation of your style and individuality.

Living arrangements

In personal fashion, you’re entirely free to make your own choices about what you wear and how you look. It might not always be so easy when it comes to your accommodation though. You may be living at home or sharing an apartment with friends or a partner, in which case you’ll need to take their opinions into consideration. If you don’t own your home, there may be restrictions in place that limit what you’re able to change about the space.

If you’re living at home or you’re fed up with your current living arrangements, it might be time to think about moving on to somewhere new. Make an honest assessment of your outgoings and income so you can see how much rent you could afford each month, or what size mortgage you could take out. If your credit history is poor, or you have a low credit score, it’s still possible to get an apartment with bad credit, you just need to consult a specialist financial broker who can show you the options available and offer advice on managing your repayments.

If you have to share your living space, or you are renting, check what restrictions are in place that could affect your redecorating plans, and talk to your flatmates about your ideas. They may be delighted that you want to makeover the apartment, or they may have strong views about what they would and wouldn’t like, so it’s crucial to sort out all these factors before you start making plans.

Fashionable interiors

Once you have a firm idea of what you can and can’t do, start looking at interior design ideas and websites for inspiration. Just as with clothing and personal style, you don’t have to slavishly stick to what’s on trend at any given time. Use the ideas and fashions that are around and adapt them to add your personal stamp.

Start with the decorating, which provides the backdrop for your interiors. Look at plenty of different color charts, wallpaper designs, and wall-hangings to help you decide on a theme for the rooms you’re making over. If you’re new to interior design, find out as much as you can about how to mix and match colors and styles in order to create the effects you’re looking for.

It’s not unusual to decide on a color for your walls that you think looks beautiful in the store or on the website, only to find that when it’s on the walls, the light levels don’t work, and it doesn’t look as good as you imagined it would. Use tester pots and samples of wallpapers to try out at home and see how well your combinations work. You should also make sure you think about how you plan to furnish the room once it’s decorated. If you’re getting new items for the room, how will they look against the wall designs? If you have to keep what you’ve already got, how are you going to arrange the pieces to make the best use of the room?

Adding personality

It’s important to make your new design not only look fashionable and stylish but to have a place that you’re comfortable in and want to spend time using. Adding in your own personal touches can make the difference between a room looking like a photo in an interiors magazine and one that takes on your personality and looks like a home.

Photos and artworks that you’ve chosen, or created yourself, are a good way to introduce the personal element. You could also add in touches that reflect your own fashion sense or are more about you than about matching a ready-made design, for instance having a throw on the couch that your grandma made for you.

When you think about it, your home is a perfect place to experiment with new styles and designs, just as much as your body. It may take more effort to repaint a room than it does to change out of a dress, but the thrill of getting it right and designing a living space you can feel proud of makes the effort worthwhile.