“When we first bought the house, the bathroom had standard builder finishes and felt fairly generic,” Lita Lee, founder of Stories from a Stylist, says. As an editorial interior stylist, Lita typically works with designers to create a room’s finished look, but in her and her husband’s home she took designing into her own hands. Lita wanted to give the bathroom more character and move away from the “original builder-basic feel.

There’s a lot to be said for moving into a boring and basic new build. Sure, they might not have the baked-in character of an older home, but a blank slate can create a lot of opportunity for turning your home into someplace that feels personal and uniquely you. That’s what Valerie Darden (@valerie.

Book lovers, get ready for a makeover that will steal your heart (and this one goes beyond just bookcases). This room started as a beige box catchall for Jessica Nickerson and her family, but it did contain a lot of books and what Jessica calls “random furniture.” But a year after living in their home, they were ready to turn this catchall into a cozy, functional reading room.