The In-Between: Letting Your Home Shift into Fall

There’s a point at the end of summer when you can feel the season changing before it actually has.

The light gets a little softer. Dinner starts happening inside again. You reach for a sweater in the morning and kick it off by noon. The flowers outside are slightly unruly, the evenings come a little earlier, and suddenly the house wants to feel different too.

I love this part.

Not quite summer. Definitely not pumpkin season.

And I don’t think our homes need to make some dramatic seasonal announcement every time the calendar changes.

They just need to evolve.

For me, the shift into fall starts less with decorating and more with editing. I look around and notice what feels too light, too bare or simply a little tired after summer.

Then I start layering things back in.

A heavier throw tossed over the sofa. A vintage rug that spent the summer rolled away. Darker wood. A lamp turned on earlier in the evening. Branches clipped from outside instead of a perfect arrangement from the store.

Maybe the bright summer pillow disappears and something worn, patterned or textural takes its place.

Nothing particularly screams fall.

That’s the point.

Warmth Without the Theme

Seasonal decorating can become very literal very quickly.

Fall does not require an explosion of rust-colored pillows, pumpkin-shaped objects and signs announcing that we are, in fact, grateful.

Instead, I think about warmth.

Warmth can come from color, but it can also come from material.

Old wood. Aged brass. Leather. Velvet. Woven textiles. Pottery. Books. Candlelight.

Pieces with a little history tend to do this especially well. They keep a room from feeling like everything arrived in the same delivery truck.

And if you know anything about Harlow, you know I will almost always choose something with a little soul over something perfectly new.

Let Summer Stay a Little Longer

There’s also no reason to rush it.

Keep the windows open.

Leave the bowl of peaches on the counter.

Cut the last unruly flowers from the garden.

Let the linen stay on the table and throw something heavier over the back of a chair.

A home can hold two seasons at once.

Actually, I think those slightly imperfect overlaps are often when it feels the best.

Look Around Before You Buy Something

Before buying fall decor, shop your own house.

Move the lamp.

Steal the little table from the guest room. Pull out the pottery you forgot you owned.

Stack the books differently.

Bring an old chair into a room where everything else feels a little too polished.

And yes, go wander the thrift store.

Sometimes the thing a room needs isn’t another decorative object. It needs contrast. Something old beside something new. Something slightly strange. Something that makes you wonder where it came from.

Those are usually the pieces people remember.

Make It Feel Like Somebody Lives Here

That idea keeps coming back to me in design.

A beautiful home shouldn’t only photograph beautifully. It should tell me something about the people living there.

There should be evidence of dinner last night. A book someone is actually reading. Shoes by the door. Art collected slowly. Something inherited. Something thrifted. Something expensive sitting comfortably beside something that absolutely wasn’t.

So as summer starts giving way to fall, I’m not interested in completely reinventing the house.

I’m interested in making it feel a little warmer.

A little slower.

A little more layered.

Harlow Living

Good rooms aren’t finished, they’re collected.