The No. 1 mistake people make when buying home decor — and how to avoid it, according to an interior stylist

• Buying the right decor is key to making your home feel cozy.
• But some decor can make your home feel crowded.
• Interior stylist Kiva Brent said avoiding impulse purchases can help you decorate more intentionally.

Decorating your home can be intimidating, particularly if you don't have much experience with it.

It can be difficult to know what to buy to make your space feel cozy, where to buy it, and where to put it in your home.

And according to Kiva Brent, an interior stylist and content creator, one of the biggest mistakes people make when decorating is buying items without thinking about how they will function in your home.

Your decor needs to function in your space

Having cute decor is important, but it becomes useless if it doesn't function well in your space or if it looks haphazard.

For instance, Brent said she often sees people put too many decor items on buffet tables in their dining rooms.

"I feel like they overstyle them, and then when you're actually eating, you're like, 'I don't have anywhere for food or the servewear,'" she told Business Insider.

"It's so common because we just want it to look good, but then we're like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm burning my hands with this pie,'" she added.

So Brent encourages people to keep function in mind as they decorate their spaces — for instance, by leaving a third of your buffet table open so it can actually hold food — but you can also help yourself by buying items more intentionally.

Think carefully about how a piece of decor will actually work in your home before you buy it

Brent recommends cutting back on impulse purchases to make your home more cohesive.

"I'll go shopping and instead of buying anything, I say to myself, 'If I remember that I want this in seven days, I can come back and get it,'" she said. "Delaying gratification is really, really important."

"If you're in a place like a HomeGoods and you're like, 'Well, I might come back in seven days and it's not here,' bring it home, and if you don't think about it in those seven days, take it back to the store," she went on to say.

And if the item is still sitting in the bag at the front door days later, take it back, Brent said.