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Before you begin designing or buying anything, you need to get real and ask yourself: What do you really want to use this room for? What do you want to do in this room but can't now?

Nate Berkus

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Nate Berkus
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: September 17
Designer
Interior Designer
Television Presenter
County of Orange
California
Asks
Use
Anything
Designing
Need
Buying
Real
Begin
Needs
Design
Really
Room
Rooms

More quotes by Nate Berkus

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Twitter is a place where you share your thoughts, yourself... you don't want a plain white backdrop for that. You want the entire page to say something about who you are. Designer or not, if the urge strikes you, go for it. Put up that watercolor you've never shown anyone. Take a photo of that hat you just knitted... whatever it is, share it.
Nate Berkus
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You can find a lot of reasonable buys at Wal-Mart. But one key to making it on a budget is by donating your time and labor to the project. Do-it-yourself projects will always help you save.
Nate Berkus
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'Priced to sell' - just the phrase makes me smile. When a dealer says all the items in his booth are priced to sell, he means he's tagged them as aggressively as he can to get you to buy them. Don't worry, though, I still haggle. You have to. That's the point of a flea market.
Nate Berkus
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Thread count is actually a lie. Just because a thread count is 1,500 on a set of sheets doesn't mean that they're well-made sheets. Truly, the quality of the cotton and the quality of the way something is woven is much more important than thread count.
Nate Berkus
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About 90 percent of the pieces in my home are vintage, and I'm a ruthless editor. I only live with things that I love. There is not one thing in my home that doesn't have meaning to me.
Nate Berkus
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I'm interested in fashion I buy fairly good pieces, and I think as I've gotten older, I've pared down a lot.
Nate Berkus
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Buying found objects means repurposing something that was already made years before, sometimes decades before. It strikes a nice balance between the new and used equation we should strive for in our lives.
Nate Berkus
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My favorite thing about decorating is mixing different periods and styles. If you have something that's old, and you really do want to mix those styles, then you have to add something that's obviously modern with it. You can't put a kind of a mediocre thing in the middle.
Nate Berkus
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We hold back our true feelings and beliefs, whether it's from a sense of being polite or fear of hurting someone's feelings. But what I have seen on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' is that no one benefits from holding back and keeping things bottled up inside. So I pride myself on speaking my mind and not being afraid to give honest feedback.
Nate Berkus
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I can change a light fixture, and I can do certain things. But I'm really bad in terms of construction. I can't do any of it on my own.
Nate Berkus
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Layering in different patterns will keep things from appearing too studied.
Nate Berkus
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I got my first Charvet knit tie when I was 15. I actually stole it from my father. I love them because you can wear them day to night. They're French and preppy and have been around since the 1800s.
Nate Berkus
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You will enrich your life immeasurably if you approach it with a sense of wonder and discovery, and always challenge yourself to try new things.
Nate Berkus
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It's my job to know what's available from every retailer, catalog, website, antiques mall, and craftsperson. A good designer or decorator has to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge.
Nate Berkus
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There's something I call 'Moving Day,' which I've done for the last 20 years. Look at everything in your home, then think about how you could combine things in a different way. Maybe you break up your night tables and use one in the family room maybe the dining room sideboard becomes a console table for your television, with storage underneath.
Nate Berkus
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In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for.
Nate Berkus
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First and foremost, I'm a decorator and product designer. Everything I do, the television shows, the books, that comes from the design work. It's what I love.
Nate Berkus
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Mixing in some rusty oranges is a warm way to update your place for fall.
Nate Berkus
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I made my parents crazy. As a kid, I redecorated my bedroom every month. I would literally save my allowance and go buy things.
Nate Berkus
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I was barely in grade school when I helped my mother rearrange the living room furniture for the first time.
Nate Berkus