There's a moment most homeowners hit — usually somewhere between scrolling through the fifteenth "trending decor" roundup and standing in a store aisle holding two nearly identical throw pillows — where the whole process starts to feel hollow. You're buying things for your home, but none of it feels like your home.
That disconnect isn't a taste problem. It's a strategy problem. And the fix isn't finding better trends to follow. It's learning to decorate with intention.
Intentional decorating is a shift in how you think about the objects you bring into your space. Instead of asking "what's popular right now?" you start asking better questions: Does this piece make me feel something? Does it work with what I already love? Will it still belong here in five years? That change in approach is the difference between a room that looks styled and a room that feels lived in — in the best possible way.
At Designly Done, we've built an entire brand around this idea. Founded by interior designer Ashley Kuhni, Designly Done exists to make intentional home decor accessible to everyone — whether you're furnishing your first apartment or putting the finishing touches on a luxury custom home built by The Ashtin Group. Every piece in our collection, online and in store, is selected with the same design-first philosophy Ashley brings to her full-service interior design projects.
But you don't need to hire a designer to decorate with intention. You just need a framework — and that's exactly what this post is about.
What Does "Decorating with Intention" Actually Mean?
Intentional decorating is the practice of making deliberate, thoughtful choices about what you bring into your home and where you place it. It's the opposite of impulse buying, trend-chasing, or filling a room just because it feels empty.
When you decorate with intention, every object in your space earns its place. A vase isn't just a vase — it anchors a console table and introduces a color you love into an otherwise neutral room. A candle isn't just a candle — it sets a mood and signals that this is a space designed for slowing down. A piece of art isn't just filling wall space — it tells a story that matters to you.
This doesn't mean your home needs to look minimal or sparse. Intentional spaces can be layered, warm, maximalist, eclectic — any style you're drawn to. The key is that nothing is there by accident and everything is there because it contributes to how the room feels.
Ashley Kuhni has spent years refining this approach through her interior design work with The Ashtin Group, where she designs complete interiors for luxury custom homes across Utah County. That experience — understanding how materials, textures, scale, and color interact in real spaces — is the foundation behind every product curated for the Designly Done collection.
Why Trend-Driven Decorating Fails
Before we get into the how, it's worth understanding why the default approach to home decor leaves so many people unsatisfied.
Trend-driven decorating works on a cycle: a look gains popularity, retailers flood the market with affordable versions, consumers buy in, and within 18 months the look feels dated. The pieces end up donated, stored, or quietly replaced with whatever's next. It's expensive, wasteful, and — most importantly — it never produces a home that feels deeply personal.
The 2026 decor landscape is already signaling a correction. The biggest movement in interior design right now isn't a specific aesthetic — it's the rejection of trend-chasing altogether. Designers and homeowners are gravitating toward what industry leaders are calling "clarity-based design" — spaces built around personal meaning, longevity, and warmth rather than whatever color Pantone declared relevant this year.
This is exactly the philosophy behind Designly Done. We don't stock our shelves based on what's trending on social media. We curate pieces that are beautiful, well-made, and versatile enough to work across a range of personal styles. When you shop with us — whether online or in our Utah store — you're choosing from a collection that's already been filtered through a professional designer's eye.
7 Principles for Decorating Your Home with Intention
Here's the framework Ashley uses with her design clients and applies to every buying decision at Designly Done.
1. Start with How You Want to Feel
Before you buy a single thing, ask yourself: how do I want this room to make me feel? Calm? Energized? Cozy? Grounded? Inspired?
This sounds simple, but it's the step most people skip entirely. They start with a Pinterest board full of rooms that look beautiful but represent five completely different moods. Intentional decorating starts with emotional clarity. Once you know the feeling you're after, every decision downstream — color, texture, material, scale — becomes easier.
A living room designed to feel calm will make different demands than one designed to feel vibrant. Neither is better. But mixing the two without awareness is how rooms end up feeling "off" in ways that are hard to articulate.
2. Buy Less, Choose Better
This is the single most impactful shift you can make. Intentional home decor isn't about filling every surface. It's about giving each piece room to breathe and permission to be noticed.
One beautifully crafted ceramic vase on a mantel does more work than six mass-produced accessories crowding the same space. A single oversized piece of art makes a stronger statement than a gallery wall assembled from whatever was on sale.
At Designly Done, we lean into this philosophy in how we curate our inventory. Rather than offering hundreds of variations of the same product category, we carry a focused selection of luxury home accessories and decor pieces — each chosen because it stands on its own. When you shop with us, you're not sifting through noise. You're choosing from a collection that's already been edited with intention.
3. Mix High and Low with Purpose
Intentional decorating doesn't mean everything in your home needs to be expensive. It means knowing where to invest and where to save — and making those decisions deliberately rather than by default.
Invest in pieces you'll see and touch every day: lighting, textiles you sit against, the objects on surfaces at eye level. These are the items that define how your space feels moment to moment. Save on things that play supporting roles — storage baskets, basic shelving, utility pieces that function more than they decorate.
The key is that even your "low" pieces should be chosen with care. A simple, well-proportioned stoneware bowl from a curated collection will always outperform a "cute" impulse buy from a big box store. This is what we mean by home decor that feels like you — it's not about price point, it's about whether the piece belongs in the story your home is telling.
4. Respect the Power of Texture and Material
Color gets all the attention, but texture is what makes a room feel alive. A space composed entirely of smooth, shiny surfaces reads as cold no matter how warm the paint color. A room layered with varied textures — linen, wood grain, woven fibers, matte ceramics, brushed metal — feels inviting even in a neutral palette.
When selecting home decor pieces, pay as much attention to what something is made of as what it looks like in a photo. This is one of the biggest advantages of shopping at a home decor store like Designly Done versus buying strictly online from large retailers — you can feel the weight of a candleholder, run your hand across a textured vase, and see how a throw catches light in person.
Of course, we know not everyone can shop in store. That's why our online shop includes detailed descriptions of materials, finishes, and dimensions for every product — because intentional buying requires real information, not just pretty photos.
5. Let Your Home Tell Your Story
The most memorable spaces aren't the ones that look like a catalog. They're the ones that make you feel like you know the person who lives there.
Intentional decorating creates room for personal artifacts: the bowl you picked up traveling through Santa Fe, the vintage print that reminds you of your grandmother's house, the handmade object a friend gave you that doesn't "match" anything but makes you smile every time you see it.
The trick is integration. These personal pieces shouldn't look random — they should be woven into a cohesive design. This is where the professional eye matters, and it's one of the reasons Ashley created Designly Done as a bridge between full-service interior design and accessible home shopping. The pieces in our collection are designed to complement personal items, not compete with them. They provide the cohesive backdrop that lets your story stand out.
6. Think in Layers, Not Rooms
One of the most common mistakes in home decorating is treating each room as a separate project. You end up with a living room that has one personality, a bedroom with another, and a kitchen that doesn't relate to either.
Intentional home decor creates continuity. That doesn't mean every room looks the same — it means there's a thread running through your home. Maybe it's a consistent material (wood tones, brass accents, natural stone). Maybe it's a color that appears in different forms across different spaces. Maybe it's a shared mood — everything feels collected, warm, and grounded.
This layered approach is something Ashley practices at scale when designing full interiors for The Ashtin Group's luxury custom homes. In those projects, every room is considered in relationship to every other room, creating a home that feels unified without being repetitive. You can apply the same principle on any scale by shopping with a whole-home perspective rather than a room-by-room one.
7. Give Yourself Permission to Edit
The final principle — and maybe the hardest one — is that intentional decorating is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Your taste will evolve. Your life will change. Pieces that felt right three years ago might not belong anymore, and that's okay.
Editing your space isn't failure. It's proof that you're paying attention. Remove what no longer serves you. Replace it with something that reflects who you are now. This is how a home stays alive — and it's one of the reasons we keep our collection at Designly Done fresh and evolving, so there's always something new to discover when you're ready for your next chapter.
Where to Find Home Decor Worth Being Intentional About
One of the biggest barriers to intentional decorating is simply not knowing where to look. Big box stores offer overwhelming selection with uneven quality. High-end design showrooms can feel intimidating and inaccessible. Online marketplaces are a gamble.
Designly Done was created to fill that gap. As a curated home decor store in Utah — with a full online shop that ships to your door — we offer a collection that's been hand-selected by a professional interior designer who also happens to be building some of the most beautiful luxury homes in the state alongside her husband Justin at The Ashtin Group.
That dual perspective — designer and builder, aesthetic and structural — gives our curation a depth you won't find at a typical home decor retailer. Every piece is selected not just because it photographs well, but because it performs in real rooms, in real homes, for real families.
What you'll find at Designly Done:
Curated collections of home accessories, decorative objects, textiles, art, lighting accents, and seasonal decor — all chosen with the same intentional eye Ashley brings to her full-service design projects. Whether you're refreshing a single shelf or furnishing an entire home, the collection is designed to help you choose home decor that feels like you without the overwhelm.
Your Home Deserves More Than What's Trending
Decorating with intention isn't about spending more money or having a designer's eye. It's about slowing down enough to ask what you actually want your home to say about you — and then choosing pieces that say it clearly.
If you're ready to move beyond trend-driven decorating and start building a home that reflects who you really are, Designly Done is here to help. Browse our curated collection online, visit us in store in Utah, or explore our full interior design services for homes of every size.
And if you're in the early stages of planning a custom home in Utah County, talk to the team at The Ashtin Group — because the most intentional home starts with the most intentional build.
About Designly Done
Designly Done is a curated home decor brand and interior design studio founded by Ashley Kuhni in Utah. With a designer-curated online shop, an in-store retail experience, and full-service interior design offerings, Designly Done makes intentional, elevated home styling accessible to everyone. Ashley also serves as the lead interior designer for The Ashtin Group, a luxury custom home builder in Utah County, where she and her husband Justin Kuhni create one-of-a-kind residences from the ground up. Shop the collection at designlydone.com.
