Oprah Winfrey Gives Her Best Advice For Creating A Home That Truly Feels Like You

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In 1985, Oprah Winfrey wrote in a journal that she yearned for a beautiful home that would "inspire and elevate" her. As she describes the entry in a 2013 essay, this realization was part of a transformation that began while filming "The Color Purple" and has lasted a lifetime. This desire also hints at the very reasons, the very same inspiration and elevation, that she could not have created a truly fulfilling and edifying home back then ... or even much later. Or possibly ever. Because as we change throughout our lives, so do the things we desire in a home.

This is not bad news, of course. Life and taste and preference are all processes that don't end until, sadly, they do. It is right and proper that what feels like home should change as well. Perhaps a home is inspirational and elevating, but it shouldn't be aspirational, it shouldn't be designed for others, and it should never be finished. Your values change, and your perfect home today won't necessarily even be comfortable in a few years.

Winfrey describes her elaborately appointed California home circa 2004, nicknamed "The Promised Land," as "a lovely place to visit, but maybe, just maybe, I didn't really want to live there." She had designed the home for other people, one of whom was probably the Oprah Winfrey who wrote that 1985 journal entry. "What you find beautiful has a lot to do with where you've been and what you've seen and the people you've met along the way," Winfrey said. But you don't want to design a home to impress others, not even a younger version of you.

Before she took on Winfrey as a client, designer Rose Tarlow visited The Promised Land and told Winfrey, "This house has nothing to do with you." After what must have been a period of recovery from such frankness, Winfrey saw the truth of Tarlow's assertion. "That thing that had been missing from all the beautiful places I'd ever lived in," Winfrey wrote in her 2013 essay, "was me!"

From time to time, one will run across an article or a video exclaiming ways to make your home seem "more custom." But the very point of this process is to make it customized for your needs, while the point of making it merely seem more custom is to impress others. It's akin to the social media lifestyle of making everything for show and forgetting that personality and hobbies are what actually make a personal design style exciting. Eventually, Winfrey says, "Your need to please falls away and what is left is the blessed realization that you really don't have anything to prove to anyone."

Before that encounter with Winfrey, Rose Tarlow wrote in her book "The Private House" that we sometimes plan homes around a need for the praise of friends, so they don't reflect who we are and how we live. "[W]e are never fully formed," Tarlow wrote, "always becoming, continually refining our image of ourselves throughout our lives. This never-ending process of evolution makes designing one's own home an extremely personal — and ongoing — experience." Indeed, curating a personalized space is becoming a home decorating trend. This is why impersonal trends like the minimalist design aesthetic are going out of style — it has nothing to do with you.