I spent most of May and June travelling across the States and Canada. Good hotels, places I'd wanted to see for years.

And by about week three, the thing I wanted most was my own living room.

Not because the hotels were bad. Most of them were great (though they are bloody expensive! You get far more for your money in Asia).

But that was also the problem. Every one of those rooms had been designed nicely and belonged to nobody.

Which, if I'm honest, describes a lot of the homes I get sent photos of.

We've quietly digitised everything that used to give a home character.

Your books are on a Kindle. Your music is on Spotify. Twelve years of photographs live behind a passcode on your phone (remember photo albums?).

The shelves and surfaces that used to hold the things you actually cared about are now either bare or filled with whatever is available at the homeware aisle.

Decorative beads. Word art. Those chunky wooden chains that mean nothing to anybody.

So here's a question worth sitting with.

If you removed every object in your home that carries a personal story, what would be left?

For most people: a perfectly acceptable room. Well lit, correctly furnished, but completely soulless.

And this matters more than most design advice gives it credit for.

Environmental psychologists have a name for the bond people form with the spaces they live in. They call it place attachment.

Jermaine and Annie’s Art Apartment

When that bond is strong, people feel calmer and more settled at home. When a space doesn't reflect the person living in it, something quietly comes loose.

You live there, but you don't feel like you belong there.

Where the soul actually lives

All the things I usually bang on about, the lighting, the colour, the red thread running through a scheme, the layering and contrast, that's about 80% of the work.

That 80% is your foundation. It's what stops a room feeling chaotic.

But the last 20% is where the soul of a home lives. The personal bits. The slightly unpolished bits.

The 80% makes a room work. The 20% makes it yours.

Getting that 20% back

Before you buy anything, go through your own drawers. Your kid's drawings, the serving dish you inherited, whatever you collect for your hobbies.

Half the personality your home is missing is already in the house. It just got put away because it didn't look smart enough to sit out.

Print your photos too. And get physical copies of the books you actually read. A shelf of those tells a visitor more about you than anything in the homeware aisle ever will.

Then give it time.

A home styled in a single afternoon can only hold whatever the shop had in stock that day, and that's exactly how you end up with generic decor.

Let the good stuff arrive over the next year or two.

When you travel, bring something back. A bowl, a small print, something handmade by a person.

The test

If a stranger let themselves into your home while you were out, could they tell one true thing about the person who lives there?

Where they've been. What they do. Who they love. Anything at all.

If the honest answer is no, that's your missing 20%.

The homes that feel most alive were never finished in a weekend. They were built slowly, one meaningful object at a time, by people who weren't in a hurry to have it look done.

Give yours permission to be a bit personal.

Reynard

P.S. If it's the other 80% you're stuck on - the layout, the lighting, the colours- we've got a couple of Room Audit slots open this month. You send photos of your room, and our team tells you exactly what's holding it back and how to fix it. I review every one before it goes out.