The Pointers in the Mess: Why I Don’t Love My Renovation (And What That Feeling Is Really Telling You)

Imagine a group of people who have lived their whole lives underground. They’ve never seen the sun. They’ve only ever seen shadows flickering on a wall in front of them, and because that’s all they’ve ever known, they believe the shadows are the world. Nobody told them there was anything else. Why would they think to look for it?

This is one of the oldest ideas in philosophy – Plato’s Cave – and it’s been borrowed and reworked by storytellers for over two thousand years, including in one of my favourite childhood books, where children trapped underground slowly start to forget that sunlight, real grass, and the sky above ever existed at all. The only thing that saves them is the small, stubborn pointers they remember – a lamp that looks a bit like the sun, only smaller and dimmer. A cat that looks a bit like the great lion they once knew, only smaller and tamer. Tiny fragments of something bigger and better, glimpsed in the world they’re stuck in.

I think about this a lot when homemakers say to me, in one way or another, “I don’t love my renovation.” It’s one of the most common things I hear – and one of the hardest things for people to admit, because everything went to plan. The budget held. The builder was lovely. And somehow, it still doesn’t feel like home.

Because here’s the part that surprises people: it’s rarely a dramatic disappointment. Nobody finishes their kitchen and bursts into tears. It’s quieter than that. It’s a low-grade unease they can’t quite name. A feeling that something is slightly off, in a house that, on paper, has everything they asked for. They walk through the finished space and think, it’s nice, but it’s not quite… me – and then they shrug, because they don’t know what else it’s supposed to feel like. Nobody told them home could feel like anything else. So they assume this mild, unplaceable disappointment is simply what a finished renovation feels like. The shadows on the wall are all there is.

They’re not.

And this is where the Cave gets really useful as a way of thinking about it. The people inside it aren’t struggling to see the light because it’s too bright, or too far away, or too hard to reach. They’re not seeing it because nobody has ever suggested to them that there’s anything beyond the wall in front of them. They don’t know to look up. That’s not a failure of effort. It’s a failure of awareness.

It’s the same with renovating. The pointers are there – they’re always there, even before a single decision gets made. The moment a colour catches you, for reasons you can’t quite explain. The room in someone else’s house that makes your chest unclench, while a far more “impressive” room down the hall leaves you cold. The thing you keep coming back to, even though it doesn’t match anything else on your mood board. These are not random preferences. They’re pointers – flashes of the home that’s genuinely yours, breaking through the noise of trends, brochures, and other people’s opinions about what your home should look like.

Most homemakers never learn to see them as anything more than passing whims. So they get overridden – by the showroom display, by the trend, by what a partner prefers, by what’s simply available that week. And the renovation proceeds perfectly competently, on a budget, on schedule, built by skilled people – and still lands somewhere a little hollow. Not wrong. Just not quite real. Not quite theirs.

This is exactly why I built Your Unique Home Design Personality® – not to hand you someone else’s map of what a beautiful home should look like, but to help you see the pointers that are already there, before a single tile is chosen or a single dollar is spent. A proper design brief exists precisely to capture those pointers before decision fatigue and showroom noise drown them out. Once you know what you’re looking for, you stop needing someone else to point it out to you. You start noticing it yourself – in a tile sample, a pattern in a fabric, a memory from your childhood of a particular feature, a doorway, a colour, a half-finished room. The pointers were always there. You just hadn’t been shown that they meant anything.

This is the real difference between the homemakers who finish a project and quietly settle for it, and the smaller group who finish and genuinely love what they’ve built. It is rarely about budget, or taste, or how good their builder was. It’s about whether anyone ever showed them there was something beyond the wall worth looking for.

You don’t need someone to drag you out of the “cave”. You were never actually stuck there. You just needed someone to tell you the light was real, and show you where to look.

If you’d love a hand learning to see your own pointers – before you start, partway through, or even looking back at a space that’s finished but doesn’t quite feel like yours – that’s exactly the conversation I’d love to have with you.

Start your own Design Clarity journey →

Frequently Asked Questions

Why don’t I love my home even though the renovation went well?

This is one of the most common – and least talked about – experiences in home renovation. 75.4% of homemakers finish a project and don’t love the result, often despite a smooth process and a skilled team. The issue usually isn’t execution. It’s that the finished space reflects a generic idea of “nice,” rather than a documented understanding of what actually feels like home to you.

What are the “pointers” Kristina talks about in a renovation?

They’re the small, instinctive moments — before, during, or after a project – where something, like a colour, a layout, or a texture, just feels right, even before you can explain why. Most people dismiss these as passing whims rather than recognising them as genuine signals of their design personality.

Is it too late to find clarity if my renovation is already finished?

No. Recognising your design personality after the fact still helps – both to understand what’s missing in your current space, and to make sure your next project doesn’t repeat the same quiet disappointment.

How is this different from just following design trends?

Trends are external and temporary; your design personality is internal and lasting. Following trends means constantly second-guessing yourself against what’s fashionable. Knowing your design personality means trusting what already feels right to you – and being able to recognise it when you see it.