Nate Berkus Quotes

Color is a very personal thing. You need to make sure to choose a color that makes you happy. But I don't recommend accent walls - choose a color you can live with on all four walls.

Go outside! I mean, even leaves from a park are beautiful in a clear glass vase. I'd rather see that than fake anything any day.

Home has always been one of the most important things. If I don't feel at home in my space, then I feel really unmoored.

I knew that I was a gay boy fairly early; what was interesting to me was that my mother didn’t know. She made me play baseball - I had no desire to do that. I said, ‘Mom, I don’t like direct sunlight, I don’t like bugs, I don’t like grass, and I’d rather be in the house playing with your fabric samples.’

I'm interested in fashion; I buy fairly good pieces, and I think as I've gotten older, I've pared down a lot.

I made my parents crazy. As a kid, I redecorated my bedroom every month. I would literally save my allowance and go buy things.

I see it every day: People trying to create a home that somebody else tells them they should have. I don't care if it's a magazine or a bossy friend - when somebody says, 'This is what's elegant, this is what's trendy,' if it doesn't represent you, you're not going to be happy.

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.

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?

When I take on a design project, I have to jet from the bookstore to the hardware shop to the lamp store and back again just to collect a small portion of the many items I need to fill a home. But, when you hit the flea market, they're all right there. From booth to booth, you have the bases covered.

I think I was the only kid on the block who knew about furniture scale by the time I was 8.

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.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned during my time on 'Oprah' is that everyone wants to be heard. We all want to have our humanity acknowledged - to have others see us for who we truly are. We all want to know that we are valued, we are heard, we are understood.

I don't believe in having spaces in the home that don't get used. We pay so much for square footage that to waste it is criminal.

When you have a bunch of comfortable upholstered pieces, a single bronze or brass chair really turns the energy up.

Even as a 10-year-old, I remember trying to explain to my mother and stepfather how upset and frustrated a messy room made me. But they just couldn't grasp it. They wanted me to be playing with baseballs and frogs while I wanted to be scouring garage sales.

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.

About 80 percent of the stuff I live with is old. I like letting things take on the character they’re meant to have by really being used. … when you own things that have the imperfections they deserve, that they’ve earned from a well-lived life, it frees you from feeling as though they’re untouchable.

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.

I live in a beautiful vintage building that was built in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Everywhere in my house are these little things that have meanings and make me think of great memories.

I've always felt that color is intrinsically personal. It evokes a tremendous amount of emotion. If there's a color you respond to, that's something you can incorporate into your home. No one can tell you it's wrong.

When I see a wall that's hung with different objects, framed or unframed, what I like about it is its fluidity and rule-breaking nature. Just experiment a bit.

It's important how we feel in our homes, because feeling good makes us more gracious. And that makes it easier to welcome others not only into our homes but into our lives.

I didn't necessarily want to be famous growing up, but I knew I would be a good famous person because I'm not offended if somebody comes up to me and knows things about me and wants to engage me in a conversation.

Layering in different patterns will keep things from appearing too studied.

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.

I like my house to be unique to me. Sure, I've bought plenty of things out of a catalog, but the way I put them together in my home is special. You might have bought your sofa at a major home decorating store, but the rug you found at the flea market is so unique, it takes your room from 'carbon copy' to 'simply yours' in no time.

We're not handling things anymore before they arrive on our doorstep. I like to feel how thin porcelain can be, run my hand over a textile, see if I want to sit in a chair.

People first. Dogs second. Things last.

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.

I was a boy with one dream and one dream only: I wanted - no, strike that, I was desperate for - a room of my own. You see, in those days I shared a room with my little brother, Jesse, and it wasn't pretty. He was the Oscar to my Felix: messy, careless, and just a little bit sticky - exactly the way a kindergartner is supposed to be.

I love linen in soothing colors for any room in the house.

In every interior my firm and I design, we are always reaching for vintage pieces, and materials that feel classic and timeless. It's how I feel about fashion as well, and definitely one of the intentions I had when designing the layette collection. I'm not a fan of trends.

I do shop online! But I’m shopping online mostly in the home categories - One Kings Lane and Gilt. At a lot of architectural websites, I buy a lot of hardware for cabinetry like hinges and things like that from England. So you know for me, I shop at Net-A-Porter, but I don’t really shop that much for clothing online.

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.

Everywhere your eye travels in your home, it should land on something that resonates with you.

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.

Mixing in some rusty oranges is a warm way to update your place for fall.

I have a large watch collection, and classic watches are especially important to me. I had a silver Rolex, and I actually gave it to my little brother. He wears it every day. He's an actor, so whenever he goes to an audition, he can look down, see it, and it gives him confidence. It was a great thing to pass on.

The Things That Matter convincingly lays out Nate Berkus’s philosophy that things do matter. Our homes tell our stories, they reflect the places we’ve been and the people we’ve loved along the way—and there can be no more beautiful design for living than that.

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.

When you buy things that are expensive, like a sofa or something that really feels like an investment, you need to keep it as plain as possible, as simple as possible. Make sure that it's a clean design that will work with whatever style you want it to.

I always want objects in my home that have a connection to me or something I've loved. It's still stuff, but it's stuff that has meaning.

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.

In a minimal interior, what you don't do is as important as what you do.

You can't be around Oprah and not have her influence you, and I don't mean that because she's doling out the free advice. I mean it because she is someone that leads with truth and follows her heart. She's a force.

There’s something beautiful and very circular about passing by something that was important to the person you loved, or touching something that once meant something to him — that brings me some peace.