Decorating Compromises for Newlyweds

Try to Share the Vision

Elaine Keener has a kitchen wall that is an ever-changing collage of yellow paint squares. Golden yellow, pale yellow, in-your-face yellow. Shades called Zinnia Gold, Spiced Butternut, Honey Tone, Cream Yellow and Powder Sand. And her husband hates every one of them. "This has been going on for about a year now," says Elaine, ever since they moved into their Oak Ridge, Tenn., house. "I suggest a paint and throw up a sample. Scott hates it."

They’re all too dark," he says. "I think we should take the color down a notch." Behind his back, Elaine is rolling her eyes. She has taken it down a notch, up a notch and over a notch—all with no luck. Now she’s ready to take dramatic action: "The next time Scott goes out of town I’m going to pick a color and paint the whole kitchen. When he comes back he’ll probably love it." Elaine has tried this method before and it’s worked. She helps her spouse "imagine" what a bit of new decorating would look like by just doing it. "Our tastes are different but not dramatically. He just has to see it all done to envision it. Then he’s usually happy."

It’s not unusual that one half of a couple has the vision and the other doesn’t, says Furniture.com design consultant Davis Remignanti. "Many couples include one decor-conscious person and one ‘it’s just a chair’ person," he says. While one partner may be driving most decisions, for the long-term good of the relationship, both partners need to be involved or at least feel that they’re involved. In the Keeners’ case, having his opinion solicited before painting was all the husband really wanted.

Sometimes neither member of the couple has any vision and that can be stressful, too. Rebecca Johnson, an interior designer at Darleen’s (www.darleensinteriors.com) in Naperville, Ill., saw this in action when she was working with a young couple that was choosing fabrics for a chair. "After hours of looking through fabrics, the husband and wife could not determine what they liked or even what they did not like. Finally, the husband looked really hard at the chair in the catalog and asked, ‘Can we just get the one in the picture?’" Looking at the chair in the room setting in the catalog helped him really "see" the chair. In fact, the couple used the chair in the picture and its fabric as the inspiration for redecorating the room the chair would be in. The fact that they were both part of this decision-making process bodes well for how they both will feel about the room and for future decorating compromises.

Ah, compromise — that’s what marriage is really all about anyway, isn’t it?

For more information, check out Sharing a Place Without Losing Your Space: A Couple’s Guide to Blending Homes, Lives, and Clutter by Regina Leeds.

Anne Krueger is the editor of HGTV.com's Decorating newsletter. She has written for In Style, This Old House, Martha Stewart Living and The New York Times.