My Favorite Interior Design Blogs
You’ve gotta love a good interior design blog. Once you spend some time on one, you start to feel like you’ve cozied up on a (great tufted!) sofa with a favorite design buddy, and a latte or glass of Pinot is not far behind. Enjoy these 7 Blog Picks, plus a blurb about what to expect from them.
La Dolce Vita: I’ve long been a fan of La Dolce Vita, the baby of blogger and interior designer Paloma Contreras, who by-the-by won a blogger award in 2014. Her mission is to bring glamour and style to your life to include not only interior design but also spicy tidbits on entertaining & travel. With a keen eye and a great way of putting pen to the page, La Dolce Vita remains on my blog hit list. Paloma has grown now to 12 contributors adding to the mix. But the blog experience in total is still somehow cozy. ladolcevitablog.com
Design Sponge: If you haven’t heard of Design Sponge…this begs the polite but wide-eyed question, where’ve you been? OK, better late to the party than never at all. This blog offers a huge range of tab-at-the-top topics: From Interior Design to DIY to Food, Travel, Life & Business and more; I truly defy you to not be able to find something of interest and inspiration on this blog. No wonder. Talented Grace Bonney started the blog in 2004 and the blog is updated 4-5x…daily! (I told you it was huge!) The blog sacrifices warm & cozy for what has come to feel like a very large machine by what has to be a group of staff writers. Good info, though. Hats off to you Grace! designsponge.com
Apartment Therapy: What started as an homage purely for apartment dwellers has blossomed to encompass topics as broad ranging as DIY, Tech, Renovation, Style, Shopping and Entertaining down to How to Get the Home You Want When Your Partner Isn’t Into Design. There are apartment tours, budget living segments to DIY place seating ideas for your next dinner party. The ideas are great, as are the visuals. You can easily spend the better part of a Sunday morning nosing around getting your design Muse into treatment…into Apartment Therapy. apartmenttherapy.com
Material Girls: This is THE place to stop in for design inspiration from coast to coast. What used to be a tiny team of interior designers/bloggers representing the coasts and Texas (Texas is its own coast!), has grown to include a cadre of 6 designers spanning from LA to Houston to Chicago to NY. And yeah, there’s a guy in the Material Girl mix now, but who’s counting? Inside its e-pages you’ll hear from very talented interior designers with great looking photo images and design tips for the home and a bit on pop culture too. The blog layout is fun and kitsch with a distinctly cute little Marie Antoinette vibe…who after all is the original material girl herself. I continue to give Materials Girls a “21 Fabric Bolt Salute.” materialgirlsblog.com
The Interior Design Advocate: Want some Design-ucation? The inside skinny from the backroom and the nails and glue that hold it all together? How the dollars add up? What to do when? Then you need to stop by at The Interior Design Advocate. Designed to empower design lovers to shed their stress, TIDA shows how to take the OVERLOAD of great ideas you’re collecting on Houzz, Pinterest, Blogs, HGTV & Magazines and put them into an actionable and clear decorating system. Donna Hoffman (that’s me!) created systems and products that empower ordinary design lovers and decorating consumers to design smarter, and spend strategically to make great rooms happen at their place. The blog actually rolled out of these product offerings! Updated weekly, it features inside info to help you design smarter, whether choosing brands, methods, professionals or appropriate styles, and more. Then there’s the irresistible weekly Design Giggle, an original cartoon that pokes fun at everything interior design. Totally worth the stop in! TheInteriorDesignAdvocate.com
Simplified Bee: This is your place if you want home décor and organization solutions. Décor-loving pack rats or clutter-can-standers, listen up: You can pick your topic options from closets and decluttering to paperwork to DIY and design for every room in the house or apartment, to include the garden. There’s a nice interview series to enjoy, and the look and feel of the blog is fresh and clear. It’s a newer find for me, and I highly recommend it! simplifiedbee.com
Décor Chick: Exuberant blogger and Décor-loving mother of 2, Emily gets a total kick out of affordable home decorating ideas and shares these along with DIY ideas and projects with the perspective that “anybody” can do them. She has a good eye, a big heart and her love of design just flies off the page. We give her blog a thumbs up. decorchick.com