If you're like many of Nate's listeners, chances are your home could use some improvements—but you just don't know where to begin. Considering the time, effort and cost involved with many decorating projects, it's easy to let fear get in the way of your design dreams. 

To help callers overcome their fear of making a mistake, Nate walks them through their design dilemmas and offers these tried-and-true tips:

• Create a binder with images of anything that inspires you or conveys the feeling you want in your home—from something as simple as a color or texture, to a beautiful piece of furniture or art.
• Just because you move to a new home doesn't mean you have to abandon your old ways of decorating. "Don't think that you can't do what you're comfortable and you know you love living with," Nate says.
• Forget convention. Sometimes smaller rooms painted dark are absolutely beautiful, Nate says.
• Focus on accessories when experimenting with a new color scheme.
• Following your instincts. "Decorating is about really listening to your gut and not trying to make up rules that usually don't exist," Nate says.