Recently, I moved house and was confronted with a problem I’ve had my entire life. When it comes to styling, I have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m doing.
None.
My stream of consciousness upon seeing an empty room is as follows:
OH GOODNESS SO MUCH POTENTIAL. I should leave it empty then I can’t f*ck it up. Will my couch suit this room? What colour even is my couch? Grey? White? It might be blue. Maybe I just… paint it black and then cover it in three different colour throws. Or cushions. You can never have enough cushions. OH I saw that decorative ladder in Ikea… but I think maybe I should do the opposite to what my instincts tell me. Look, I’m going to put this blue plate on the second shelf of my bookcase and that will look nice. Yeah. Really nice. Fin.
The part of my brain responsible for imagining how things will look just never really developed.

It became clear to me as I was scouring Gumtree for furniture, and despairing over a room that does not look anything like what I wanted it to - that there are people in the world who are really, really good at this and I just need to ask them what their secrets are.
There have to be some simple rules that plebeians like myself can follow in order to have a somewhat stylish home.
It's not that I can't tell what looks good and what doesn't, it's just that I know my house doesn't look good and I do not know what to do about it.