When a fresh start means a fresh interior

When Christine Speare, 36, ended her five-year relationship this past March, she moved out of the New York City apartment she and her ex-boyfriend had shared. One month later, she relocated to a studio apartment in the same building and began working on its decor.

The apartment is still a work in progress. But, crucially, it no longer bears traces of Speare’s ex, whose aesthetic she described as “demure” and “midcentury modern.” Her own, she said, is “whimsical but not childish,” with light, bright colors and patterns. “We didn’t really go together, and neither did our stuff,” Speare said.

After a breakup, redecorating can be as logical a next step as hiring a lawyer or telling friends and family. After all, there’s a chance the end of a relationship also means the end of a relationship with some of your possessions, like the couch that belonged to your partner. Adapting your space to account for these changes can be painful, but it can also be liberating.

For many, it begins with removing signs of an ex.

When her ex-husband moved out of their Seattle home in 2007, Rebecca West, 48, immediately sold their bed, couch and a poster they’d purchased on their honeymoon. “I got rid of almost everything related to my marriage,” said West, author of “Happy Starts at Home.”

“There were certain touchstones. Every time I looked at them, there was a tsunami of emotions,” West said. “I was like, ‘I cannot live like that, something must change, I am going to do something dramatic.’”

She repainted the walls blue-black, turquoise and lime green. “It was a hot mess,” West said. She changed the hues to sky blue, lilac and moss green a week later. Then she bought a turquoise velvet couch and a white shag rug. She found pendant lamps from Goodwill and changed the lampshades, covering them in pink art paper and gluing on white silk flowers. West described the space as akin to a “no-boys-allowed dollhouse.”

“Making over my house was hands down the very best thing I could have done after he left,” West said. “I had no career and no direction, and I felt miserable, but I was able to keep my hands busy, which helped the days pass. Then, as I saw things change around me, and started liking what I saw, I slowly started to feel like, if my home can change and get better, maybe my life will, too.”

After a significant life transition like a breakup, decorating can provide a much-needed sense of control, said Toby Israel, author of “Designing Women’s Lives” and “Some Place Like Home.” “Creating the ‘me,’ not the ‘we,’ home can offer an opportunity to reinvent not just your home but your very sense of self. It’s almost like art therapy.”

Israel experienced this firsthand after moving with her two children from England to New Jersey following her divorce three decades ago. “They say the three most stressful things in life are moving, changing partners and death,” she said. A breakup with a live-in partner is a “double whammy of stress” since it often involves two of them, she added

When Israel moved into the home she purchased two years after her split, she hosted a party, inviting several friends over to help her paint. “Together, we transformed my bare white living room and dining room walls into a soft, golden ‘here comes the sun’ color,” she said.

She also took the opportunity to select decor that spoke to her personal passions. To encourage a desire to take up sailing, Israel chose nautical details for her bedroom, like white curtains with grommets and a green-and-blue color scheme. (It worked – she began taking sailing lessons within weeks, she said.) In her dining room, she hung mural-style wallpaper depicting mountains and paths ascending into the clouds. Each time she enters her home, Israel sees this landscape, which she described as “a metaphor reminding me to continue upward on my journey.”

Nancy Herman, 61, a former attorney who moved into her new house in Washington, D.C., in 2022, made it a point to lean into her design preferences following her separation and divorce. Herman collaborated with an interior decorator, Christopher Boutlier, on the decor. She described her taste as neutrals with pops of color and unexpected touches, like the large geometric painting hanging in her dining room. Its hue, she said, is “yield-sign” yellow.

“Over the course of my life, I have done 12 houses,” said Herman, adding that each design decision was made in conjunction with someone else, whether a romantic or business partner. “This is the only time I have been able to say, ‘I am going to do what I want.’”

Herman said her ex-wife favors symmetry, elegance and neutrals – the antithesis of the painting in her dining room and the deep blue walls in her powder room.

“When a relationship ends, you have to define your new existence,” said Herman, whose children split their time between her home and her ex-wife’s house down the street. “It was good to focus on something productive. I was like, ‘OK, you have to build your life, you have to make your space.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.