✨ Madison’s First Book

Things I Wish I Knew Before I Decorated My First Home

Every mistake I made — so you never have to. A practical, honest guide that saves you time, money, and a whole lot of decorating regret.

125 pages · 13 chapters · PDF + Kindle

I painted my living room Pepto-Bismol pink. Twice. On purpose.

Then I bought a blue velvet sofa so massive it swallowed the room, and hung curtains so short they looked scared of the floor.

This is the book I needed before any of that happened — thirteen chapters, one per expensive lesson.

Instant PDF + Kindle download. Secure checkout by Stripe.

You are not bad at this. You have just never been shown the order to do it in — and every guide you have found starts at “pick a palette” when your actual problem is that the room feels wrong and you cannot say why.

This is for you if…

you have moved into your first place and it still feels like a rental
you buy things you like and they somehow do not work together
you want a home that looks considered without hiring anyone

Probably not, if…

you already know your style and just want inspiration photos
you are looking for a shopping list rather than a method

What’s inside

The Entryway Sets the Whole Vibe (And I Totally Ignored Mine)
I Bought All My Furniture First (Big Mistake)
The Wallpaper Incident (Or: Commitment Issues)
Small Living + Dining Combo: The Space I Butchered
Paint Colors Are Not Just Paint Colors
Window Treatments: The Thing I Left for Last
Lighting: My Dark, Dingy Disaster
I Decorated Every Room the Same Day (Burnout City)

Mixing Styles: My Identity Crisis
Storage — The Boring Thing That Would’ve Saved My Sanity
The Accent Wall I Painted Three Times
Rugs, Pillows, and Accessories: The Details That Almost Broke Me
What I’d Do Over (And What I’m Keeping)

What this book gets you

🛋️ The Backstory

I used to think some people were born with a magical decorating gene.

You know the ones. They walk into a room and just know where everything should go. They pick paint colors without breaking into a cold sweat.

Their homes look like they stepped out of a magazine, while mine looked like a furniture store exploded.

I was convinced I’d never be one of them.

Here’s what took me four years and a lot of money to work out: they made all these mistakes too. They just made them before anyone was watching.

My Greatest Hits (of Failure)

🎨Paint colors that looked stunning in-store and terrible on my walls

🛋️A sofa so oversized it literally swallowed my living room

📏Curtains so short they looked scared of the floor

💸Thousands spent on pieces that never worked together

Every one of those has a chapter. Not the tidy after-photo version — what it cost, what I should have done first, and how to get it right the first time.

What You’ll Discover Inside

📏

The order to buy furniture in. I bought mine first, and my sofa did not fit through the door. Chapter 2 is the hierarchy — what to measure, what to buy first, when to splurge and when not to.

🎨

Why the beige looked pink. Undertones, finally explained — plus how to test paint properly, and how the light in your room changes everything after 4pm.

🪟

Hang curtains high and wide. The one rule that makes a rental ceiling look taller, and when to skip curtains altogether.

🚪

Start at the entryway. It sets the tone for everything behind it, it is the cheapest room to fix, and I ignored mine for two years.