Seasoned interior designer and design historian Alessandra Wood said she’d never put some colors, window treatments, and design elements in her home.
With so many design options and changing trends, it can be difficult to decide what items are worth buying and which you may want to skip in your own home.
So, Business Insider has been checking in with interior designers for tips and inspiration. This time, we spoke with Alessandra Wood, an interior designer and design historian with over a decade of industry experience.
Here are a few items and trends Wood said she’d never have in her own home — plus a few styles she’d opt for instead.Decorative mason jars just aren’t her cup of tea.
Mason jars have been a popular interior-design trend for years, especially among those who like rustic or farmhouse aesthetics. They can be found on Pinterest as repurposed soap dispensers, lighting fixtures, flower vases, candle holders, and so on.
However, these decorations can feel a bit too homemade for Wood.
Though mason jars work well for storing leftovers and dry goods, she said she’d never use them as decorative accents in her home.
Instead, she’d opt for more stylized accents and fixtures that fit her personal design style.
„For soap dispensers, you can find beautiful natural materials that take a sculptural vibe“, she told BI. „And for lighting fixtures, the world is your oyster.“She swaps out „filler“ decorative accessories for items with more personal meaning.
Wood said she also avoids „filler“ accessories, or decorative objects that are mass-produced and essentially meant to fill empty space.
„While these pieces can be great when they really speak to you, oftentimes we find ourselves buying them just to buy something“, Wood said.
Instead, she prefers to have a more curated look in her home, focusing on displaying decor with meaning.
„Choose decorative accents that you find yourself drawn to and really love or ones that you collect on your journeys“, Wood told BI. „I like to use this approach when deciding what to put in my home space and nix the objects that don’t support a larger narrative.“For window treatments, Wood avoids roller shades, which can look dated.
She’s not a huge fan of roller shades, a type of window covering that typically features a single piece of material that can be rolled up and down using a string or chain.
