“A good home must be made, not bought.” – Joyce Maynard

For the past six months, we’ve had zero inspiration on how we wanted to decorate our primary bedroom. 

None. 

Nothing was coming to us. We’d have maybe a glimpse of an idea, but nothing concrete. Normally ideas and creativity come to us pretty quickly, so we started to get a little antsy.  

We couldn’t help but feel frustrated with our lack of inspiration. One of our priorities is to have a cozy bedroom that we look forward to going to bed in every night; our own sanctuary, you might say. (Sleep — and ultimately having a place to rest that’s separate from where we work and spend time with our son — is very important to us!) However, it started to become a source of irritation. 

Instead of letting this little obstruction get in the way of our process, we decided to fully embrace the home decor creative block and sit on it. We didn’t want to make any impulse decisions just to have a room that is put together. We wanted it to reflect our style and the feeling that we desire. So we just let it be: not decorated, hardly touched, and pretty bland — and, if we’re being honest, pretty messy and disorganized.

But that’s where creativity comes in. Have you ever just stared at the ceiling? The creativity that can come with just being and not stimulating yourself with any form of entertainment can be quite beneficial and enriching. Once we started not thinking or caring about as much, that’s when we started to feel the creativity kick back in.

We didn’t want to rush the process, especially because the process is half of the enjoyment! There is nothing better than the satisfaction of waiting for the right moment to do something. When you allow yourself some space and some time to just be, I truly believe we can be capable of anything. It is far more rewarding and fulfilling in the long run. 

If you’ve read along with us for awhile, you know we’re big proponents of the idea that action spurs inspiration — not the other way around, as we often think — but creative pursuits can be fickle. Some prospects feel near-fully formed and require immediate attention (the “shelf life” theory), while others are a blank canvas inviting a slow start with no pre-determined end point. Conversely, there are the select few that don’t require such urgency and need to sit in a barrel to mature before they’re ready for you to put pen to paper (that’s a lot of mixed-metaphors).

In other words, you have to trust your “artistic gut” (don’t get it twisted, we are all artists). When you have a vision that’s as clear as day, you have to move on it. If you don’t know where you’re headed but have “creative restless leg syndrome,” then you have to find a place to start. If you have nothing — picturing Kathleen Kelly saying “blank” as she types it into her chat box — but know it’s something you’ll eventually have to get done, then don’t rush it. Let it sit, give yourself time, or even stare at the ceiling.

For us, inspiration came from a surprising place. When we saw this bedding, things started to click. It was as if the perfect starting piece had been waiting for us all along. The soft textures, the subtle yet striking patterns, and the rich colors instantly sparked a wave of inspiration. Suddenly, we could envision the entire room coming together—every detail from the wall molding to the side tables started to fall into place. It was the kind of “aha” moment we had been waiting for, where everything just made sense. The bedding wasn’t just a piece of fabric; it became the foundation of the bedroom transformation we had been dreaming of.

Ironically, bedding is potentially the most interchangeable component of a bedroom, which can be a fraught starting point for design ideas. But for whatever reason, having one element of design in place led to another, and then another. We don’t expect to keep this exact bedding in place forever, obviously, but maybe it was the light, refreshing break from the winter doldrums that our senses need in order to bring the rest of it altogether.

Now, we feel like things are getting to a good place, and we’ve found ourselves ending the day in our bedroom more often as we result. It feels more peaceful and laid back than before, and it’s given us the perfect launching point for softening the edges of this room as we go.

If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be: don’t rush it. 

And that expands far beyond decorating your home, but don’t rush it. What they say is true, patience is a virtue. When you let things evolve naturally and with time, it always turns out more beautiful and more satisfying then you could have imagined. 

Good things always take time.

Trust the process and don’t rush it!

I’m linking the pieces I’ve used as we’ve updated our bedroom so far: