Like most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have art prints of the Savior in my home; we seek to emulate Him and remember Him always, so it makes sense to have visual reminders. LDS people don’t typically display crucifixes, not because we object to them, but because we choose to emphasize the resurrected Christ, of course without ever forgetting what he suffered for us.
Because we believe in making covenants in temples, including and especially “sealing” married couples and families for eternity, many LDS people also display photos or paintings of temples in their homes. I have a small, original painting of the Spokane temple that was done by a distant family member.
Like people of every religion and lack thereof, we display family photos – immediate family, extended family, ancestors, etc. One of my favorites – my grandmother and her five siblings standing in stair step order, boy girl boy girl boy girl, the three girls wearing intricate cotton dresses that I’m sure my great grandmother spent hours ironing with a heavy iron heated on a wood stove.
LDS people, like many others, tend to like inspirational sayings – many homes with teenagers display the “Be’s advice” given to the youth of the church by the late prophet Gordon B. Hinckley – “Be Grateful, Be Smart, Be Clean, Be True, Be Humble, Be Prayerful, Be Positive, Be Still, Be Involved.”
Many, though far from all LDS women, like crafts, and we occasionally get together at a church for a crafting session, often of home decor items, leading to many LDS homes in the same area having similar decorative items in their homes. There’s an old joke about a woman of a different faith, who had several LDS friends, observing the same fake grape arrangement in the homes of all of them, leading her to wonder if possibly there was some LDS theological meaning to grapes. (There’s not, it was just the in thing back in the early 1960s.)
There are artists, LDS and otherwise, whose work appeals to many LDS people, leading to a certain unintentional continuity of decor in LDS homes – a very few of the many are Greg Olsen, Minerva Teichert, and Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Finally, one distinguishing trait in the home decor of so many LDS families, many of whom include children, is a certain well worn look.
