Home décor is important. You spend so much time in your house and it should be your refuge from the hustle and bustle. When you make that decision to decorate it to suit your tastes, it can be overwhelming: Furniture is so expensive, painting is an involved process…where to start? We spoke with interior designer and founder of Items of Interest, a Brooklyn interior design store owned by Susie Kurkowski, about mistakes commonly paid by shoppers when looking to decorate their homes. Kurkowski narrowed it down for us and told us the items not to spend your money on. 1. Spend money on special pieces, like rugs. I’ve purchased rugs in Egypt and Morocco – the quality and experience of buying a rug there is amazing. You don’t have to go all the way to India to shop, but do spend a little extra on a nice rug. There’s such a big difference in a good-quality and a fair-quality rug that will just end up falling apart. It’s a good investment piece that you can roll up and take with you. 2. Don’t spend money on an entertainment unit. You can get an infra-red eye on Amazon and then have the unit a 100 feet away, hidden in a closet. No one wants to look at blinking electronic clocks on the DVD player that you never use. Moreover, that media centre takes up valuable space – space that most urban-dwellers don’t have to spare. 3. Consider your bookshelves. Unless you have dedicated space for a library, particularly if it’s in a public space, you need to weigh how beautiful are your books rather than a lovely piece of furniture with a piece of artwork above it.