Decision Fatigue? What is it and how to overcome it in your home renovation project
- Ashley Lawson
- Apr 30
- 6 min read
If you've been ordering samples for months, spending your weekends in showrooms, and saving images to Pinterest every night but still haven't made a single decision....
I want you to know something: you're not being indecisive. You're exhausted.
This is something I've been sitting with myself. We moved into our home in November, it's now April, and since moving in I have done specifically nothing. And I'm an interior designer.
So if you're feeling stuck in your renovation, I hope this blog post helps you understand why, and more importantly, how to get through it.
What Actually Is Decision Fatigue?
Decision fatigue isn't just a buzzword. It's a documented psychological phenomenon. The idea is that the more decisions you make throughout a day, the more mentally depleted you become until eventually, making even small choices feels impossible.
Now apply that to a renovation. You're not making one or two big decisions. You're making thousands of small ones: who to get a quote from, what tile to shortlist, how much to spend, which layout works, what your partner thinks, whether you've actually explored all the options. And that's before you've even chosen a paint colour.
When we did our own phase one renovation four rooms, two bathrooms, and a landing. NO wonder I was completely gone by the end of it.
It's actually the same reason you see celebrities wearing the same outfit every day. Removing small decisions from your life preserves your mental energy for everything else. Renovation gives you no such luxury.
Why It Hits Renovators So Hard
The decisions aren't small. When someone says "it's just a colour" or "it's just a wallpaper," they're not accounting for the fact that these choices are part of a project that could cost you tens of thousands of pounds. These are real financial commitments, and the weight of getting it right is completely understandable.
There are too many options. Twenty years ago you went to your local tile shop, pointed at something you liked, and booked the fitters in for four weeks' time. Now you've got Instagram, Pinterest, Houzz, TikTok, and an endless scroll of beautiful rooms that may or may not bear any resemblance to your actual home. It's overwhelming — and it's designed to keep you looking, not deciding.
Inspiration isn't the same as a decision. This is one of the most important things I see with clients. They come to me with a Pinterest board full of images they love, genuinely believing they know what they want. But when we look at it together, what they love is the vibe of the space — the atmosphere, the feeling — not necessarily the individual materials in it. Choosing your flooring is its own decision. It's not the same thing as falling in love with a finished room on Instagram.
I worked with a client once who wanted a gentleman's club feel in his home. The images he'd saved were stunning — high ceilings, massive windows, very American in style. Beautiful. But his house had completely different architecture, and no amount of tile or paint was going to change that. The gap between the inspiration and the reality wasn't a design failure. It was just that the images weren't his home.
Decisions are all connected. This is something I build into every client project from the start. I'll typically use a flat lay or mood board to set the design direction early on — because once that's agreed, every subsequent decision has something to refer back to. You can shortlist two flooring options, narrow down your wall colour, but if you haven't made a call on the tile yet, you can't finalise anything else. Everything is interlinked. And if you're trying to make all those decisions at once, in isolation, while scrolling new inspiration every evening — of course you're going in circles.
What Decision Fatigue Actually Looks Like
You might recognise yourself in some of these:
You're ordering samples regularly but not committing to any of them
You've had a contractor out for a quote, but when they asked what you wanted done, you realised you didn't actually know
You've got a Pinterest board with hundreds of images, but adding more feels easier than removing any
You feel excited about your renovation in theory, but when it comes to actually moving forward, you hit a wall
You've been "thinking about it" for months and nothing has changed
The contractor situation is something I see a lot in my own work. A homeowner calls a joiner or tiler, they come out, they ask what the client wants — and the honest answer is "I want it done, I just don't know what." The contractor can't quote without a design brief, so nothing gets booked. It stalls. And then usually, that's when I get a call. Which I genuinely love, because when we work through the brief together and the contractor gets to come back in, the result is almost always something the homeowner is truly proud of. It's a good process when it happens that way.
How to Actually Get Through It
Take a defined break. I know this sounds counterproductive, but stepping away from the decision-making entirely — staying off Pinterest for a couple of weeks, putting your samples away, not actively consuming new design content — gives your brain space to breathe. When you come back to it, you'll be able to look at what you've already gathered with fresh eyes and actually figure out what you want to keep versus what you were just saving because it looked nice.
That's what these last few months have been for me. Unintentional at first, but honestly? It's been helpful.
Separate inspiration from decision-making. Scrolling at night is not the same as deciding. Give each its own time and space. When you're in decision mode, close Instagram and look at your flat lay. When you're in inspiration mode, save freely — but don't expect it to turn into a decision.
Go through your Pinterest board and clear it out. Once you have a clear sense of the direction you're going, go back and remove anything that no longer fits. Move it to a different board if you can't let it go, but declutter that mental space. Quality over quantity, always.
Think about the energy of the space, not just how it looks. This is something I lean on a lot. Our ensuite has electric blue tiles and terrazzo — it's high energy, bold, joyful. That was completely intentional because an ensuite is where you start your day. I wanted to feel something when I opened that door. Our main bathroom is the complete opposite — natural tiles, spa-like, calm — because that's the room I use at the end of the day when I want to wind down. They look nothing alike, and I love them both. When you're struggling to choose, ask yourself how you want to feel in the space first. Often the rest follows.
Split big phases into smaller ones. This is exactly what I'm doing with our downstairs renovation. Instead of tackling the whole floor as one project, I've split it into phase two (the WC, living room, and hallway) and phase three (the kitchen, dining room, and utility). Smaller scope means fewer decisions at once, and it also helps with budgeting — which takes another layer of pressure off.
You're Not Behind. You're Human.
If you've been hard on yourself for not making progress on your renovation, I hope this gives you some reassurance. The reason it feels hard isn't because you don't have taste or you're bad at making decisions. It's because renovation is genuinely a lot — financially, emotionally, and mentally.
And for what it's worth, I'm right there with you. The designer's house is always last.
We spoke about this top on the podcast. If you want to listen to the full episode, it's available now on YouTube and Spotify. @abodewithaftapod
Ashley is an interior architectural designer and host of the Abode With After podcast. She works with homeowners and clients across Scotland on residential and commercial design projects.
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