Decorating your home can be difficult. We all know that. But if you're one of those people that has a slightly sophisticated taste, if you yourself may not be a sophisticated person, decorating your home can be a veritable nightmare.

As a Home Decorating Sophisticate, or HDS as it were, you have a refined taste in furniture, flooring, sashes, throw pillows, drapery, rugs, lighting, hanging artwork and pretty much everything else that comes through your line of vision. You can sense imbalance in your sleep and your aura blends with Zen decorating on an ultimately frightening level.

Never fear, though. You don't have to go to a professional decorator to get the look you want and can be happy with for your home—which is great because with your picky style, a professional decorator would be a complete waste of thousands of dollars.

First things first. Learn to appreciate imbalance and make it work with your extreme sense of balance. When you're learning to appreciate the simple things in life, the sophisticated side of you can break lose and make it difficult. One of the most important things a sophisticate must know when trying to decorate a home for reality is that there can never be perfect balance in everything. Life may be about learning achieve balance, but if you have kids, or a life that moves with the speed of the world, there's bound to be an occasional dirty sock on the floor, traffic marks and hand smudges on your walls. Decorate to suit those needs.

You may need to purchase an area rug to cover the places where people walk the most. Oriental rugs are perfect for parlors, living rooms and dining rooms as well as any other place your sophisticated little heart needs to put one. In outdoor spaces or sunrooms a well made bamboo area rug or seagrass area rug can be an excellent addition to your motif. Remember though, that an area rug is more than just a way to cover up the little imperfections that send your sophistication radar blaring up a storm. An area rug is a way to bring warmth and life into your otherwise over-perfected home.

But don't think that it's only about area rugs and covering things up that you don't want to see. Decorating as a sophisticate is also about learning to appreciate the macaroni and glitter jewelry box your daughter made enough to proudly display it next to the Faberge egg knock off your grandmother left you.

Remind yourself everyday that sophistication is less important than the little things in life. As a sophisticate you can always have a beautiful home that you love. But it is so few and far between that a sophisticate can have both a beloved home and home that's full of love.

It's not easy to have a sophisticated home that is also full of life and ready for reality. Give life a change and you may find it's more sophisticated than you thought.