It’s been over a decade since Joanna Gaines first started teaching homeowners how to give their place that farmhouse look alongside her husband Chip. But the former Fixer Upper co-host is still a major influence in the interior design world. With the Magnolia Network channel and the Hearth & Hand brand at Target, Gaines continues to offer valuable guidance to homeowners across the U.S. If you’re in need of some, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for 12 of her best home decor tips so you can spruce up your space.
- Let nature guide your choices.
While many of us are keen to take our guidance from Gaines, the Fixer Upper star recently opened up about who—or really, what—she turns to herself: nature.
“I always tell my team when I get stuck from an inspiration standpoint, or I can’t figure out what the next step is, I always go outside. I don’t go online, I don’t look at books—I have to step outside,” Gaines tells Home & Gardens in a recent interview. “Nature is our greatest teacher with design because it does it so perfectly.”
According to Gaines, the colors and textures she sees outside usually end up finding their way into her home decor inside.
“To take and draw from the color palette that you see in nature and bring that inside, it’s the best translation of that feeling, of ‘What do I feel in nature?’ I feel grounded, I feel this sense of calm, like this is where I belong,” she explains. “If you can somehow bring that into the story of your home—that’s what you hope your family feels. That’s what you hope your guests feel. And so to take those cues from nature, I think that’s always where I would want to start first. It’s rarely let me down.”
2. Add dimension to create character in plain spaces.
In a TikTok video, Gaines is tasked with turning a plain white room into a dining room with a mini-renovation. Her secret? Creating character by adding dimension in parts of the space.
“Don’t have time to replace the door, so just added a little bit of trim here so when we paint it, it has a little bit of dimension,” she tells viewers.
Gaines also upgrades the ceiling in a similar way, using 1 x 2 and 1 x 6 pieces of wood.
“We’re going to do this pattern on the ceiling that just is kind of like a high low to just create a little dimension on the ceiling, a little interest,” she says.
3. Embrace changeable accent pieces.
Changing up the look of your home can end up being an expensive endeavor—unless you take Gaines’ budget-friendly advice to embrace changeable accent pieces.
“I’m a big believer that swapping in a few small things can make a big impact,” she tells Elle Decor. “Think about how you can play around with dimension, color, and texture—like incorporating seasonal accent pillows or a new throw blanket, or simply adding a new vase with large, fresh-cut stems to your cocktail table. It’s often those small additions that become big shifts in how we feel about our homes.”
4. Don’t rush to get all your pieces at once.
When decorating your home, the last thing you want is for it to feel overly-curated or staged. In order to avoid this, Gaines tells Elle Decor that it’s important to remember a “home will evolve over time.”
“The pieces that you wait for are what make the process so fun. It’s never a good idea to buy everything from a catalog and be done,” she cautions. “Obviously you need the basics, like a sofa or dining room table, but after that, it’s good to look at a blank wall and say ‘I’m going to leave that wall blank until I find ‘that very thing’ that makes it meaningful to who I am. That’s how you insure that a space feels authentic to the story you want to tell. It evolves.”
5. Search for scalloped design elements.
Another one of the most “timeless motifs” you can add into your house is scallops, according to the 2024 summer issue of Magnolia Journal. You can utilize them through the borders of rugs, the edges of shelves and mirrors, or even the rims of plates.
“I’m in a season where, if I could have scalloped everything, I think I would. I’ve found myself returning to this whimsical style more than ever when it comes to home and product design, which I credit to its nostalgic shape and cheerful aesthetic,” Gaines shares. “Can you see a scallop and not help but smile? Me neither.”
6. Create an accent wall with wallpaper.
Using wallpaper can instantly bring life into your home, but you don’t have to cover your entire house (or even an entire room). Instead, Gaines recommends starting with just one accent wall, according to a post on her Magnolia blog.
“Hanging the print on one focal wall rather than everywhere allows you [to] bring pattern into the room in a more subtle way,” the post explains. “Wallpaper, with its many prints, textures and patterns has the unique ability to add individuality to a room.”
7. Try mixing and matching your artwork.
Choosing artwork for a space can be a daunting task. But when pairing pieces together, Gaines advises that homeowners use this as “an opportunity to experiment with mixing and matching,” per a Magnolia blog post.
“This approach helps provide dimension and variety,” the post says. “Try pairing abstract pieces with more literal ones, oils with watercolors, sketches with photographs, etc. Choosing styles that balance each other can naturally guide the eye from piece to piece.”
8. Choose a candle scent for each room.
If you’re trying to bring more cozy elements into your home, choose unique candle scents for each room. While a “variety of scents can suit any space,” Gaines and her team wrote an entire blog post to share suggestions of where to place certain scents around your house.
“Candles have a way of filling rooms with familiarity and a sense of home,” the post explains. “Although a scent doesn’t make a space, it can help emphasize the best of what’s there and give a room an identity all its own.”
9. Try transforming a space with rugs.
If you don’t have enough time or money to replace the flooring in a room, consider covering it with a rug instead. While discussing one of her mini-renovations with Elle Decor, Gaines says she knew she wanted to “hide the living room’s dated tile.”
“And investing in a large area rug was a lot cheaper than installing new hardwood floors,” she points out.
10. Stick to using the same light bulbs.
“Lighting is the magic in a room,” as a Magnolia blog post notes. But once you select the lighting for your home, you need to choose the right light bulbs, which vary in terms of lumens (amount of light they give off) and kelvins (their color).
If you’ve found a bulb that you like, Gaines recommends “sticking to the same one throughout your space, especially in similar fixtures.”
“A good rule of thumb: If you keep two different light sources on at the same time, use the same bulb for those spots,” the blog post notes.
11. Learn how to style your shelves.
A well-designed room usually has its fair share of open shelves. But what’s the secret to styling shelves so that they look purposeful and not like a cluttered mess? According to a Magnolia blog post, it all comes down to grouping objects together.
“Shelves feel most cohesive when items are grouped together,” the post explains. “Decor groupings don’t have to be the same kind of objects or even closely related, simply placing pieces in close proximity to each other helps a shelf feel curated, rather than cluttered and random.”
12. Get inspired with antique pieces.
In a now-deleted blog post from 2021, Gaines opened up about how she uses antiques as “inspirational pieces” to create a focal point in her home, per Homes and Gardens.
“One of my favorite things to do is go antique shopping at off-the-beaten-path shops and flea markets. I always get inspired when I see pieces from the past,” she writes. “They all have their own story, and there is just something about a piece that isn’t mass-produced but one of a kind.”