Trust is the entire product of an editorial site. These are the standards every piece of content on Decoralot is held to — written down so you can hold us to them too.
Independence
Our recommendations are decided by our editorial process and nothing else. Specifically:
- No brand can buy a placement. Products and brands cannot pay to appear in our guides, to improve their position in a ranking, or to soften a verdict.
- Commissions never shape conclusions. We earn affiliate commissions from many retailers, including on products we criticize. Whether and how much a retailer pays us has no bearing on what we recommend. Where two comparable products exist and only one carries a commission, our pick is still decided on merit — and we would rather recommend a product that earns us nothing than damage the only asset we have, which is your trust.
- Advertising is separate from editorial. Display advertising on Decoralot is served by an ad network and clearly distinguishable from our content. Advertisers have no visibility into, or influence over, what we publish.
Accuracy and currency
- We verify before we publish. Product specifications, materials, and construction claims are checked against manufacturer documentation and, where possible, corroborated by owner reports and third-party sources.
- We keep guides current. Buying guides are reviewed and updated on a recurring schedule and whenever a significant product change occurs. Every article displays its last-updated date. Pricing shown via our product modules updates automatically from retailer data.
- We show our work. Where a claim depends on a source — a material standard, an industry figure, a designer attribution — we cite it.
Originality and honesty about experience
- Everything we publish is original. Our guides are written by us, for this site, never syndicated or scraped.
- We are honest about what is hands-on. Some assessments come from products we own, have photographed, and live with; others come from showroom evaluations; others from structured research and aggregated owner experience. We tell you which is which — our How We Choose page defines these levels precisely. We will never imply hands-on testing that did not happen.
- Our images are our own or properly licensed. Original photography is identified as ours. We do not pass off brand or stock imagery as our own testing.
- We use modern research tools, and a human is always the editor. Drafting and research may involve software assistance, including AI tools; every published word is reviewed, fact-checked, and approved by a human editor, and every verdict is a human judgment.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we fix it visibly. Material errors are corrected in the text with a dated correction note. If you spot an error, write to support@decoralot.com — we read every message and act on substantiated corrections promptly.
Disclosure
Decoralot is reader-supported through affiliate commissions and display advertising. A plain-language explanation of how this works — and how it doesn’t influence our editorial judgment — lives in our Affiliate Disclosure, which is linked from every page of this site.