Think of the last time you re-decorated or re-designed a room in your home. It may have been a new home, simply updating an outdated style, or for a new purpose, whether that be a nursery for a new baby, updating a kid's room to their changing tastes, creating a study for your new work-from-home lifestyle, putting in a dream man cave, game room, or craft room, or making a space more usable. You may have chosen a generic theme: seashells in the bathroom, abstract zoo animals for baby, Disney princesses for your pink-loving toddler, chefs in the kitchen, etc. You may have gone down the aisle at Target and bought everything that matched the theme, and cleverly added a few touches from Home Goods or bought something on Amazon to fill the gaps. You may have re-painted the walls, adding cohesion to the theme. And maybe you were underwhelmed by the results. 
Now think of the next time you re-decorate a room - it will be a completely different process with completely different tools and completely different results, at least if I have anything to do with it. We now live in a world where millions of talented artists are within our reach, tools to create the perfect pieces are at our fingertips, niche interests are celebrated, and hacks are abundant. And these tools, resources, and the gig economy are only going to get better, more helpful, more accessible and more powerful as time goes on. 
Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail" rightfully predicted that niche markets would become more accessible. In that book, he says, "It is when the tools of production are transparent, that we are inspired to create." That is one of my favorite quotes, because I truly believe that we now live in a world where we are empowered to make our dreams come true, big or small and everything in between. To best understand where we're headed, we need to take a look at where we've come from. Big Box Retailers dominated consumer's wallets, capitalizing on economies of scale, utilizing cheap labor in China, and knocking smaller shops and artists out of the way. It seemed like there was nothing that would hinder the growth of mass produced, ever cheaper products for us to buy, buy, buy! When ebay started to get a spot in the lime light, consumers turned their interests into not just buying but also selling, the Big Box Retailers saw a small threat on the horizon, and economists wondered if auction pricing would take over the world. Amazon was a much bigger threat to the Big Box Retailers, first single-handedly killing my beloved Borders, and quickly expanding beyond books - Circuit City, anyone?
Between ebay and Amazon, it seemed that we could buy EVEN MORE! But there was another trend sneaking into the interwebs, and that was a growing crafters and artistic community. Enter etsy, the ebay of craft supplies and finished crafts and art. Social media grew up in this environment, and along came Pinterest, a beautiful blend of social media and the modern Good Housekeeping. With seemingly endless recipes, design hacks, crafty ideas and clever tricks, Pinterest went beyond the pin-board functionality and created a culture of aspirations in the kitchen and in the home. YouTube also plays its part here, with lots of tutorial videos about how to make or fix anything.
Fast-forward to today. Etsy and Amazon are still a great places to buy niche art and products, but there are even more ways to do it yourself. From Spoonflower, which prints custom fabric and wallpaper, to fiverr where you can pay someone to do something creative for cheap, and from 3D printing to maker spaces with laser cutters and decal tools, the home decorating space is ripe with opportunities to create whatever you could imagine. No longer do we need to stick with common themes: if you like a specific scene in a movie, a song, a game, or a book, you could build a whole room theme out of that. You will be able to do this, not necessarily by buying more finished goods, but by creating custom products. Craft stores have been around since before the likes of social media and etsy, but they unlike the Big Box stores, craft stores will become more relevant as YouTubers and Pinterest pinners promote more crafts and hacks that can be done with the same old craft supplies. Craft supplies are also evolving, though, too, making more accessible kits for amateurs, so you don't have to be an incredibly crafty person to create amazing things.
This will be the topic of my upcoming book! I will be focusing on creating a themed-room of Disney inspiration, and will discuss some principles to execute these amazing themes, even if you don't consider yourself terribly crafty or artistic. My main principle is to go for big, bold elements, and I will talk more about what that means within different themes and different rooms and functions.
Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms
