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Your home is either working for you or working against you. Most people underestimate how much the difference matters, according to interior designer and author Nate Berkus.

“Meals taste better. Parties go smoother. Children’s homework happens faster and more efficiently,” he said. “When our spaces represent us well, everything else seems to fall into place.”

Berkus spent more than 30 years helping people arrive at that feeling, working with private clients and television audiences alike at every conceivable budget. He says a home that is both timeless and personal is within reach for anyone, regardless of their resources. The price tag changes, he said, but the goal is the same.

The process, he is quick to add, isn’t a weekend project.

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“It is a conscious decision to live well. It is a pursuit,” he said. “I believe everyone can do it because we all dress ourselves, most of us prepare food for ourselves, [and] we all decide how we want to cut our hair. This is just another extension of expressing our personal style in a tangible, visual way.”

Mansion Global spoke with Berkus about where to begin, no matter what you’re working with.

Start by Clearing What Isn’t Working

Before anything is added to a room, Berkus said, something has to go. Editing, the act of removing what is no longer serving you, is the foundation of every other improvement and it requires neither money nor professional help.

“I’d rather look at five pretty things than 50 things I can’t see anymore, which are burying the function, the beauty, the efficiency of a space,” he said.

The payoff, he said, is immediate and disproportionate to the effort involved. Once the noise is cleared, what remains becomes visible, and what is missing becomes obvious. Then it is worth spending time or money on further personalizing one’s home.

Next, Bring in One Object With a Story

After the edit, Berkus recommended a single, deliberate purchase, or better yet, a retrieval. The goal is to introduce one thing that forges what he called a connection between a memory or a desire and a material object, and to place it somewhere prominent.

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“Whether it’s a beautiful mirror from France in your entry because you had one trip to Paris 25 years ago and always think about it, or a beautiful pair of lamps in pottery that reminds you of the town you grew up in,” he said, “invest in one thing that’s not an impulse buy, that feels like you.”

The object doesn’t have to be new or expensive. Berkus pointed to storage as the first place to look. Grandmother’s dishes brought out of their plastic zippered cases and displayed in a glass-front cabinet, he said, serve the same purpose as something bought at a design gallery.

“See how it feels to be greeted by something that you see a bit of yourself in when you walk through your front door,” he said. “Start there. It’s about slowing down. It’s about shutting out the noise of trends, of designers on TV [and] of people appearing in magazines who are always being asked for advice.”

The next step is learning to identify what you’re drawn to before you spend another dollar.

Go Deeper by Finding Your Through Lines

Berkus offered an exercise that costs almost nothing but requires genuine attention for those with more time. Before buying anything or making design decisions, he said, collect five images of spaces you truly love, not limited to homes. These could be a hotel lobby, a room in a museum, a friend’s living room or the work of a designer whose Instagram you follow.

“Then sit with them and try to understand the elements. Not the overall. It should never be copied and pasted, but what are the through lines? Is there a lot of symmetry? Is there a tremendous amount of color? Are there a lot of patterns, or a lack of patterns? Is there a focus on natural materials, or on highly contemporary, artisan-crafted furniture?” Berkus said.

Those aspects function as a filter, once they are named.

“At least you’re armed with some sort of a framework,” he said, “so that when you start seeing 30 other images come through on your social media feed, you have the opportunity to quiet out what won’t serve the process and stick to what you love.”

This, he said, is how you learn what you love, as opposed to what an algorithm shows you. The goal isn’t to copy what you see, but to understand why you keep stopping to look at it.

Go All in by Letting Your Designer See Your Closet

Berkus had one over-riding piece of advice for those ready to bring in a professional: Be vulnerable.

The most anonymous, personality-free interiors he has encountered, he said, belong to people who hired talented designers and then kept them at arm’s length.

“When you don’t develop real relationships based on vulnerability and honesty with other people, what you get back isn’t layered, it’s not someone else’s best work, it’s not particularly interesting, and it doesn’t represent you,” he said. “And how could it, because they don’t know you?”

What a designer needs, Berkus said, is personal stories, not an unlimited budget.

“We need origin stories. We collect stories of the rise and the fall, the divorce, the second marriage, the third chance at life [and] the survival stories,” he said. “If you want an interior to represent you, you have to be willing to be known. Not intimately. But enough.”

One of the more unexpected suggestions in his new book, “Foundations: Timeless Design That Feels Personal,” is to let the designer see your closet. Berkus, a sociology major in college, said he reads personal style as a brief. The lipstick shade, the weight of jewelry and the materials someone gravitates toward in their clothing can translate to textiles, metals and finishes.

“If somebody wears all silver jewelry,” he said, “I’m not putting bronze or brass in their house.”