MY HIGH/LOW PHILOSOPHY
I talk a lot about my love of a high/low design philosophy, but you may be wondering "what exactly does that mean?!?" Simply put, when it comes to interior design, I love nice things but prioritize where I spend and where I save.
As background, I'm the person that gravitates towards the most expensive thing in a store (without fail) and sometimes has to be brought back down to planet earth when I'm found rationalizing the purchase of something that is completely irrational. With that said, I was raised to value quality over quantity and to only buy what you can afford. While I can't always afford the exact item I actually want now, I whole-heartedly believe having a beautiful home is not mutually exclusive to having an exorbitant bank account. Good taste doesn't mean you have to go broke, and having a well-designed home can be achieved on any budget. It just takes patience, compromise, and prioritization.
Take for instance our dining room buffet. It is a crowd favorite and I get more inquiries on Instagram and via email about where it's from over any other piece in our home.
Would you believe it's from IKEA?
When we sold our last house, moved across the state of Florida to be closer to family, and decided to rent until we found a home to buy, we knew we would need extra storage to accommodate all of our stuff (oh stuff!). The bedrooms are massive for a townhouse but the kitchen and family room areas are tiny. We didn't want to spend a fortune on a temporary storage solution and we were lucky to come across IKEA's BESTA line during the inevitable "I've just moved and need to go to IKEA" adventure.
It comes in a variety of configurations, sizes, and colors and we loved the textured door option. We bought two of these and installed them side by side.
For $500 we have extra storage that looks great, holds a ton of things, fits in line with our style, and wasn't crazy expensive. It allowed us to put the rest of our funds towards new sofas which we knew we wanted to splurge on. That's where the high/low philosophy comes into play!
The best part about this piece is that I've seen plenty of higher-end versions over the last year that are nearly identical yet WAY more expensive. I mean, does this pretty doppelgänger from Bloomingdale's for $3,280 not look strikingly similar to our IKEA version!??!
