Are you a T-shirt-and-jeans person with a chintz living room, or someone who loves the structure of a suit but wakes up in a shabby chic bedroom?</p><p> The decorating world is shifting toward a streamlined look that, at the very least, complements the personal style that people already incorporate into their wardrobes.</p><p> &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a really modern thing that people look more and more like their houses,&rdquo; says Stephen Drucker, editor in chief of House Beautiful magazine. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all connected. People used to look the way they thought they were supposed to look and decorated their homes the way they thought they should decorate their homes. But we&rsquo;ve been moving in the last decade to a &lsquo;do-it-your-way&rsquo; philosophy.&rdquo;</p><p> It wouldn&rsquo;t be uncommon to find a 42-inch, flat-screen TV as the centerpiece of a home anymore, Drucker says, and you&rsquo;d probably assume the person who lives in those surroundings has the casual lifestyle to match it. Twenty years ago, that same person probably would have hidden that TV in a cabinet &mdash; and hidden his true, couch-potato self under a suit, he says.</p><p> &ldquo;Try to imagine your mother&rsquo;s house, and then imagine how people dress today. That person today sitting in that living room doesn&rsquo;t work. It&rsquo;s just the world moving on,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The home world used to have a lot more rules.&rdquo;</p><p> In interviews, Drucker and California-based interior designer Annette Tatum, author of &ldquo;The Well-Dressed Home&rdquo; (Clarkson Potter, $35), point to a change in approach to furnishing a new home. In their parents&rsquo; generation, they say, the first purchases were the dining set or the oversized sofa in the living room, which would almost surely have two chairs set to face it.</p><p> Everything else would be built around those big-ticket items, which would be expected to last years.</p><p> Now, it wouldn&rsquo;t be out of the norm to fall in love with a cheap pillow at a mass retailer and pick out everything else to highlight it. Or it could be an expensive chandelier that dictates the d&eacute;cor.</p><p> The point is, Tatum says, there are choices. She encourages clients to think about decorating as they would dressing: What&rsquo;s your signature item? What are your favorite colors? Where do you fall on the fancy meter?</p><p> Then she offers tips more often heard from wardrobe stylists:</p><p> &bull;<strong>Layers!</strong> Wearing layers makes life easier, and so does layering your home so you can easily add, remove or swap in a new favorite in place of something so last year without major redecorating.</p><p> &bull;<strong>Think about lifestyle. </strong>Twenty years ago, Tatum says, she wore a lot of miniskirts. She doesn&rsquo;t anymore. Her house reflects a stylish, busy 48-year-old mother, not a single gal. One isn&rsquo;t better than the other, but as life evolves, taste often does, too.</p><p> &bull;<strong>Find a little inspiration on the red carpet.</strong> &ldquo;I might not relate to Britney Spears, but her whole circus theme of her tour is appealing &mdash; and it might end up being a small part of my home. Just like I&rsquo;m not going to wear a pointy bra, but I might add a little edge.&rdquo;</p><p> &bull;<strong>Accessorize.</strong> This is where you get the most bang for your buck, and you can drastically change the effect without a huge time or financial commitment.</p><p> &ldquo;The passion for accessories has come to the home, the same way it came to fashion and became about the bag, shoes and a belt. It&rsquo;s now about the vase, the lamp and pillow,&rdquo; Drucker agrees.