Marrying someone means you need to move in and live in the same house, change your ideas of privacy, share responsibilities in running a house, and change your schedules. It can be both an exciting and stressful time for those who can’t seem to find a middle ground when it comes to decorating the home. How do you marry your design styles if you have different tastes?

Find your objective

You will need to find something in common and then slowly build up from there. For this, you will need to determine your objective when decorating a home. Do you want to focus on a theme or a color palette? Once you have agreed on the basic design objective, then you need to consider which items should go and what needs to remain?

Start with a clean slate

If you both have a ton of items in your possession, you might never be able to meet that common objective. One option that could work is to get rid of non-sentimental and unnecessary items. Start with a clean slate as they say so that you can narrow down the items you need to work with. However, you need to keep in mind that material things are part of your partner’s identity. Asking them to get rid of it because you don’t like it is insensitive and may be indicative of another problem in your relationship.

Work with neutral colors first

Deciding on the color of the walls and furniture is more contentious than you think because color is known to have an effect on the person’s mood. Instead of arguing which color is better, why don’t you agree to work with a neutral color that neither of you have strong feelings about. White or beige can be a good starting point.

Shop together

Whether you’re looking for materials to redesign the apartment or you want to find pieces to decorate the home, both of you should have a say in the matter. Look at different catalogues, browse through listings online, and schedule a window shopping if you must. Shopping together also makes it easier for you both to set a budget realistically because you get to talk about your opinions of the items. If you can’t even do that together, then you probably have other things to worry about your relationships besides decorating your home.

Apply the 80/20 design rule

The idea is to have a similar theme of at least 80% of the furniture and decorations. You can then use the remaining 20% to add personal touches from you both. This is where you can use those personal items or collections you decided to keep. That way the house has its unique style that reflects both of your choices, but it also showcases accents that highlight your unique personalities.