Design Lessons From a Stylishly Evolving Home

Design is about solving a problem. Our homes, inside and out, are problems waiting to be solved. Luckily, if you're anything like me, they're fun and challenging problems.

If you're smart and ensure that your home functions well, you can solve the aesthetic problems in many different ways with the same materials. Most of the fun of interior decorating is the play — moving things around, standing back, taking it all in and moving things again. It's about finding the satisfying emotion you're looking for from the act of decorating.

Modularity is key to almost every object I bring into my home. I want to be able to use a piece several ways in different rooms to different effect. I also like to use different rooms in my home for different reasons to change the whole feel and experiment with new ways of functioning. Staying active in the evolution of your design is paramount to the ongoing evolution of your aesthetic.

Emma Reddington of The Marion House Book takes this notion to heart. She recently added another baby to her family and spent the months up to baby Orla's arrival reimagining her home in Toronto, Ontario. Her living room and dining room were swapped, and a few simple details turned the big brother's old bedroom into the new baby's nursery. The result is a new-feeling home, a new way of moving around the space and a new way of enjoying the things she already had.