Can Pinterest Really Help you get the Perfect Home?

Ok, raise your hand if you've ever gotten sucked into the Pinterest vortex and spent hours pinning "new home ideas" or "fashion trends" or a bajillion recipes and desserts on Pinterest!  Guilty.

I use Pinterest for both my personal life and for work.  It's my go-to for inspiration for projects, recipes for dinner, and fashion ideas for each season of the year.  It's a really great visual platform to help you set goals, dream for the future, and solve everyday problems.  I even use it to create my project and home design boards!  For the average DIY-er, I'd say that Pinterest and Youtube are the top sites to visit for home decor, renovation, and design ideas for the home.  But the question I'm asking today is, "can pinterest really help you get the perfect home?"

Maybe you've found yourself on Pinterest or Houzz because you're ready to tackle that next home project. Maybe you’ve finally decided to get more organized and that means de-cluttering your home. Maybe you’re facing a life change – a new baby or a baby leaving home for college. Whatever the challenge, you're hoping for that pinterest-perfect home, that look that you've pinned a thousand times on numerous boards.

Let me tell you though that there is no pinterest-perfect home.

"The internet is great for viewing ideas for reference; however, it is also great for viewing expensively staged homes that are not lived in with kids, dogs, and a messy husband. The ideas should be borrowed and integrated into your lifestyle – That may mean changing them – It may also mean ditching them. Not every idea can be executed in your space no matter how hard we try. However, when one idea is abandoned another may come to life." - From Platinum Kitchens Blog

Sites like pinterest and houzz - even decorating shows on popular TV channels - have opened the doors for creativity, education, and inspiration. They've made design do-able for the everyday man. However, they do a poor job of managing expectations. We see beautifully designed spaces accomplished in just minutes on HGTV. We see some before and after pictures on a blog and think we can do that too! What's missing is the months of planning, the thousands of dollars spent, and the stress that all went into those projects.

So we get on those sites and we save images. We attempt to make our homes into expertly staged, million-dollar homes in a weekend, on a $100 budget. And then we wonder why it didn't turn out to be a pinterest-perfect home. We wonder why there's all this fighting and stress in our family when the house becomes a construction zone. We wonder what's wrong with us that we couldn't do what Joanna Gaines does on TV.

Life is not a perfectly edited show we see on TV or a myriad of staged photos we find on a blog.  Life is full of both beauty and mess.

Pinterest and Houzz are not full of both beauty and mess. They're mainly full of crafted perfection. Emphasis on the word "crafted". When we visit those sites, we're presented with expertly staged homes, photoshopped portfolio images, and a highlight reel of images from bloggers, designers, and other creatives.

Those images that are captured on Pinterest, that are immortalized on the web - they are not real.  They are staged.  Real life doesn't look pinterest-perfect.  Real life is imperfect, full of chaos and clutter.  Real life means kids, dogs, husbands, and dirt.  So take the images you love on Pinterest and let them be the beginning of your journey.  Don't let them steal your joy because that one picture is perfect and your home (where REAL people live) isn't.

4 Ways Pinterest Promises Perfection, but doesn't Deliver

Pinterest promises you a magazine-worthy home.

Um, newsflash! Those homes on pinterest are just like a model in a magazine. They've been done up, staged with rental furniture, and photoshopped beyond an inch of recognition. In other words, they aren't real. To get one of those magazine-worthy homes, you'd have to hire a designer, spend thousands on furniture and decor, and then not live in your home for fear of messing something up!

Pinterest promises you can Do-It-Yourself and you can do it affordably.

Um yeah, no! A lot of the home decor images and decorating pictures online are stages and sets created as part of a marketing campaign. They've been crafted to show a company's latest line of furniture or decor. As in, they aren't real either. You haven't been given thousands of dollars or free, top-of-the-line furniture to decorate your house with. So your house isn't going to look like what you see online unless you're willing to spend a pretty penny.

Pinterest promises once you get a perfectly, beautiful home, you'll be happy.

The fact of the matter is that you, me, stuff - we are all in a state of decay. As soon as something is made, it begins to break down. Let's get real...that white sofa on the magazine cover...not realistic with kiddos. So you can buy it and spend $20,000 on it. But then you will spend the rest of your life stressing about someone or something staining it. Having to constantly upkeep and maintain your stuff is exhausting!  Nothing lasts.  Nothing is finished.  Nothing is perfect.

Pinterest promises that a beautiful home will cause people to love you.

Those likes and shares on social media? We all want them. We want to know that we are cared for and loved and seen. Guess what? Those likes and shares won't mean didly squat about 2 hours after you've posted your beautiful home pictures. Everyone will have moved on to liking the next coolest thing. And you'll just be left with all this beautiful stuff - beautiful stuff that doesn't care about you. If you want people to love you, love them first. Don't try to impress them with your stuff.

So can Pinterest help you get the perfect home?  Yes and no.  Pinterest and other blogs are great places to start.  They help the imagination set sail on a journey.  Don't get too caught up in recreating an image exactly from the web.  Remember abandoning one idea allows for another to be brought to life.  So, embrace the imperfect, unfinished, and unpolished of life. Find love and joy in people and relationships first - not in stuff.

Looking to design an Interior that's focused around people and not things, check out our E-Design Services >