What Is Tasteful?

It simply has to be LUXURIOUS!!!!! Anna Nicole never understood my vision!

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Taste is an innate gift of aesthetic judgement one is born with , which cannot be taught or explained to the non-beholden.

For me, home furnishings should be comfortable, timeless, and welcoming. The decor should reflect the personality of the person who lives there, rather than the unified vision of an interior decorator. A room should never scream at you -Either for its color scheme, its furniture, or the knickknacks that decorate it. Simpler is better. Uncluttered is better. Less is more. A couple of classic film posters are great, but no prop replicas (wands, rings, swords, etc.). It's okay to display a collection (nicely, in proper cabinets or shelves), but that's a limit of ONE collection. If you collect multiple things keep them in separate rooms. (If you have more collections than available rooms, you're not a collector, you're a hoarder.)

High quality and luxury are nice, of course, but you don't have to be able to afford them in order to show good taste.

Signed originals, no prints!

R3 is correct.

[R3] ia only partially correct. While taste is innate in some people, others acquire it by exposure.

Taste is absolutely learned.

You "innate gift" people probably believe also in karma and that hairdressers and the most exalted arbiters of taste and refinement.

Taste is decorating your home with only photos of yourself.

[R8] = A non-beholden

If you have to ask . . .

Tasteful is not marrying a grifter American 3rd rate actress who wants to be the center of attention and when she doesn't get it, she drives a wedge between you and your family.

Lucky ones like myself are born with it. In my case, taste extends through my entire family!

I somewhat agree with R3 and like what R4 wrote except for having collections displayed and lack of clutter. Too much of a distraction and would imply that one is showing off. A bit of clutter implies having a variety of interests and shows a bit of whimsy which tones down a room so it's less formal in appearance.

To me tasteful means a pleasing arrangement of matching colors and patterns and cohesion in all of its design elements.

There's also the rule of three.

R15, that’s completely devoid of personality. Homes should not look like hotels.

If you have to ask, you will never understand.

Just call me and relax.

GOLD everything!!!!

Tasteful is a phony concept. It is a hideout for people afraid to express themselves.

Taste is highly subjective. But I think a lot of what we call "good taste" has to do with how we perceive color and space. A bright, airy room will always be more immediately appealing than a dark, cluttered one simply because we can sense freedom of movement and clearly see where we are.

[R20] = Non-Beholden

R21 i think it depends on what a room is used for. A dark library full of books creates a cozy atmosphere at night. Light and airy rooms are great during the day but can sometimes feel cold at night when the large windows reflect back in.

It’s based on a lifetime of looking and noticing everything around you. It’s a mixture of this awareness of your surroundings, and your own sensibilities and intelligence in interpreting them.

Dataloungers have terrible taste, very country cozy elderly grandmother but much blander.

Subjective but usually it means fairly muted colors and no excessively loud prints. Or maybe a couple of bright colors or patterns but balanced with cream or white .Truthfully I find excessively tasteful homes a bit boring and predictable. I like to see designs that are a bit unusual or unique .

I took an art class (drawing). At the beginning of the semester, there were some really bad drawers and some people with natural drawing ability. By the end of the semester, most people were proficient drawers.

My point is that you can be educated about interior design and your "taste" will change. It's not something that you just have to be born with.

Genuine taste, like genuine class, is never demonstrated to impress - or embarrass - other people.

I remember visiting a house on the Hudson River that dated to the 1770s, with some early Victorian additions. There was nothing in it that was very valuable or particularly beautiful and while there were paintings on the walls that were interesting, they were clearly by ambitious family members and itinerant traveling painters of the colonial era. Yet the whole house was like stepping into a luminous illustration - something about the patina, the practicalities, the few decorative items chosen for color or for personal association - it was like a page out of "The Spoils of Poynton".

I think taste of that sort is achieved through an unspoken balance between the accretive and architectural.

Spoils of Poynton for anyone else who didn't recognize it. Thanks, r29, for the mental stretch. Really.

[R30] I suppose I should have identified it as a novel by Henry James. It's my favorite of his mid-period works. It contains a scene in which an elderly lady, forced into a cottage and deprived of her collection of priceless antiques, manages to summon the same effect with the Victorian furniture and simple objects of the mansion she was banished from.

It's that talent which seems to embody taste.

There's a gentleman lampooned here on another thread who I will not name, as I don't want to pile on too much, but who posts pictures of his apartment on Instagram. The rooms are full of interesting objects and works of art - but the effect is cold, clinical and ugly, because there is no unifying aesthetic plan or obvious reason for anything, so the place seems neither lived-in nor loved.