How to Choose Your Decorating Style & Use a Design Plan
Choosing your decorating style can be a fun experience but also challenging. The biggest problems I see people run into is they don’t stick with a style, but instead pursue their interior decorating without a plan and begin purchasing items that often times don’t enhance their décor or go with their style. Consequently, many of the purchases end up not working and wasting money. A real key to accomplishing a beautiful home interior that you’re happy with is to first decide what style you want to have, and then create a decorating plan that helps you to stick with that style, (and budget).
Design Plan Elements
Click to enlarge
Where to start:
Some great places to start for choosing your decorating style: a favorite piece of artwork, the era of your house, an existing area rug, pictures of rooms you like, and if all else fails, look at the colors of clothes in your closet… these tend to show which colors you gravitate to, and therefore the colors that make you happy. Also think about your goals… is the room too dark and dreary? Is the room too bright for a bedroom? Do you need to guard your computer or TV screen against glare?
In the above decorating plan elements I started with a piece of existing artwork to choose the color scheme, and considered the style of my client’s house and other decor in the home, which were traditional. We looked at a couple different color combinations that would work with the art piece as well as the existing wall color…
- Process of choosing color scheme
Color scheme option
My clients chose to add the blue color scheme.
Design Plan Elements:
We simultaneously looked at area rug options when considering the color scheme. Often times it can be difficult to find the right area rug to coordinate with what you already have, so it helps to include one in your design plan before you start making any purchases. (Area rugs are an important design element not to be overlooked!) This will help assure that everything coordinates and save you time in the long run. You may not be ready to purchase an area rug right away, but at least you’ll have a good idea of what style and color combinations to look for.
Reviewing all your design elements together, such as on a computer screen or design board greatly helps with visualizing the changes as well as catching anything that doesn’t look right. For example look at your window treatment fabric with the upholstery fabric, wall colors, artwork, and area rug. Do the same thing with new furniture pieces to make sure they look good together, considering the legs and finishes as well. In this case, paint colors weren’t necessary since the room had recently been painted. However normally I recommend holding off on choosing your paint colors until you have a design plan. It’s much easier to match paint colors to your furnishings than search for furnishings to match your paint colors… Especially where area rugs and artwork are concerned. Trust me!
- “Before” photo
- “After” photo
The budget:
Once you have a decorating plan, you have the elements for a budget. (The fun part, not!) The budget can be approached in a couple different ways: 1.) Look at a high/low range and choose where you want your budget to fall, or 2.) Start with your most ideal options and work down from there if necessary. Usually I provide a high/low range before I begin putting the design plan together, and then the budget can be tightened down as the plan is produced. You don’t have to spend the entire budget all at once. Your plan can be carried through in phases, but having a plan in place before you begin implementing any changes and making purchases is guaranteed to save you time, help you avoid costly mistakes, and also help you get it done right the first time!
Before
After
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[...] to the window treatments, wall decor and area rugs. (Although be sure to have an interior design plan before you start purchasing.) These are the same important elements that tie the look [...]
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[...] sure you have a design plan for the room before you choose your paint colors. This is VERY IMPORTANT!!! This will save you [...]
we always choose home interiors with bright colors because the mood is uplifting “”`