A couple of weekends ago, I sat down with my cousin during a family barbecue, discussing how he envisioned his future home. He had spent most of last year collecting inspiration, but still had no clear direction on what he wanted his home to feel like.

Sound familiar?

In this issue, we’re talking about design filters - the kind that sharpen your vision and guide your decisions. Specifically, we’re covering three ways filters lead to better interior design decisions:

Let’s dive in!

In my experience, the two most common filters people use are trends and cost. Honestly, it makes sense because budget feels responsible, and trends are a shortcut to a result that looks good.

Both of them offer a kind of certainty in a process that can feel overwhelming. The problem is that neither one actually tells you anything about you.

A budget tells you what you can spend. It doesn't tell you what to spend it on. But, without clarity, a budget just becomes a ceiling. Most people end up filling the space up to that ceiling with things that function but don't quite hold up experientially over time.

Then, two years later, they're spending again. Not because the pieces wore out, but because the space never really worked in the first place. It felt unfinished.

Trends carry a similar trap. A trending aesthetic can look genuinely beautiful and functional. However, a space built around what's popular right now, instead of what resonates with the person living in it, has a short shelf life.

Styles move on. When they do, you're left with a room that feels dated and disconnected, full of pieces you bought in confidence, but now feel tiresome.

Neither budget nor trends is a bad thing to consider. They just shouldn't be where the design process starts. When they become the primary drivers of your design decisions, the result is almost always a space that's cohesive on paper but hollow in person.

The filters that can help you create authentic spaces you’ll love are different. They're rooted in how you live, what you already own, and how you want to feel. Those are the ones worth starting with.

Interior design filters don’t have to be complicated. Sometimes the most useful one is the simplest: how do you actually live?

If you have two dogs and a toddler, a cream boucle sofa may not be the best design choice. You’ll be needing furniture that’s easy to clean. If you work from home and need your space to feel calm and focused, a bold, high-contrast scheme will give you anxiety.

Your lifestyle is constantly sending you signals about what will work. The trick is in learning to treat those signals as design criteria, not afterthoughts.

When you apply this lifestyle filter early, it prevents you from making decisions that will not work for you. You stop feeling guilty about not wanting what everyone else seems to want and start looking for pieces that fit in your way of life.

One of the most common things I hear is some version of: “I don’t know where to start because I already have so much stuff that doesn’t match.” And I get it because it can feel like a dead end. But your existing pieces are actually one of the most valuable filters in the interior design process.

When you work around what you already own — a sentimental piece of furniture, a rug you love, an art print you’ve moved with three times — you’re not decorating around obstacles.

You’re building a story. Those pieces become the anchor to your design aesthetic, and everything else has to earn its place in relation to them.

The alternative, which is starting completely from scratch, might sound liberating, but it’s often the reason people end up with spaces that feel more like a showroom than a home.

There’s no thread connecting anything to anything else. No history. No sense that a real person actually lives there.

Working within constraints, even the constraint of an armchair you’re not ready to replace, forces creative problem-solving that results in more interesting, more personal spaces.

Here’s the filter that people skip most often, and it’s the one that does the most work: how do you want to feel in this space?

Not just what you want it to look like and function, but how you want to feel while in that space.

When you answer that question first, you eliminate lots of design choices without even thinking about them. If you want to feel grounded and calm, you’re already moving toward warmer tones, natural textures, and lower contrast.

If you want to feel energised and inspired, you’re gravitating toward bolder choices, more visual variety, and brighter light.

The emotional target acts like a compass. When you’re standing in a store, and you can’t decide between two options, you come back to: which one moves me closer to how I want to feel in my space?

The decision is the one that will answer that question closely. Emotion is a filter. It cuts through the noise and tells you what really belongs in your space.

If any of this resonated with you, if you’ve got the folder, the saved posts, and the blank walls, I’d love to help you find your filters.

My design transformation experience is created for exactly this moment. The consultation begins with the Experiential Design Assessment: a 25-question process designed to reveal your unique design psychology profile.

It maps how you live, what you already own, and how you want to feel and turns all three filters into a clear, personalised direction.

That assessment, plus everything that follows, is included in the $850 experience. You get design support built around your needs and lifestyle, a space that genuinely reflects who you are, and the long-term confidence to keep evolving it.

You don’t need more options. You need the right ones.

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President Trump first revealed plans for the Independence Arch in October 2025, showing reporters a model on the Resolute Desk. CBS reporter Ed O'Keefe asked if it would be called "The Arc de Trump", a nickname the media immediately ran with.

The proposed structure would stand 250 feet tall, taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris at 164 feet, and sit at Memorial Circle, directly between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Current design proposals feature bald eagles on the spandrels, wings evoking classical antiquity, and at least one version partially gilded in gold leaf with the words "INDEPENDENCE ARCH" inscribed on the entablature.

The project has drawn significant pushback on multiple fronts. Three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian filed a federal lawsuit arguing the arch would disrupt the historically significant sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Aviation experts have also raised concerns, noting that the proposed site sits within the final approach corridor for Reagan National Airport, where aircraft pass at an altitude of just 492 feet.

Even some architectural experts who initially supported the concept of an arch have raised alarms, arguing they expected something far smaller in scale.