Creating your own room design (Part 1)
How many times have you decided to redecorate a room and the first thing you did was choose a paint colour, slap it on the walls and then start to think about the other elements in the room? I know I have certainly taken this approach in the past.
What happens is that when you step back to admire your paint job you have a sense of pride in what you have managed to achieve, but once you start to put in your furniture and décor items it doesn’t quite work. The room feels bland and disjointed.
Clients that take this approach often then think they are no good at design and DIY, give up and live with an uninspiring room. Even worse they don’t then take on any more home renovation projects and live with rooms that they don’t love.
If this is all sounding a bit too familiar, then read on.
Creating an ideas board
Before you head to the local DIY store to buy paint it is important to spend some time putting together an ideas board. Now you can do this digitally, or as I like to do for my personal space, sticking pictures onto a board.
To create a digital board, you can either cut/paste images from around the internet onto a blank piece of paper (using word/powerpoint). Pinterest and Instagram are a great place to start for ideas - treat them as search engines to look for ideas. You can also sign up for a free trial with software like Canva to create a board using one of their many free templates. If these boards are for your own private use, and you are not advertising them in any way, you can grab any pictures for inspiration.
The idea is to start by finding pictures of looks you either love or are looking to create in your space. If I buy a magazine, its rare but I do from time to time, after reading I always rip out tear sheets of full pages or images that I find inspiring. I keep them in a box and use them as inspiration triggers when putting together a look.
Position these images onto your board to start to create a look you like. Don’t stick them down for now as you will want to move pictures around, take some away and maybe add more. The most important thing is that the board does not need to look perfect. Let your inspiration and ideas run wild at this stage. It’s about finding the things that you love and bring you joy. Practicality comes later.
Once you feel like you have enough pictures then start to curate them down to the ones that you really love. Now this is important, it’s not about which images are on trend or you think you like because that’s what everyone else is doing, it’s about what you love. What brings you that warm tingly feeling.
Your home is your personal space not a show home for those that come to visit.
Once you have a final set of images you can then start to look at the style and colours that you are drawn to for your space. This is the start of your design.
Part 2 of this series will show you how to take your board and start to build out your own design. I'll be publishing that at the same time next week.
In the meantime if you......
Want help?
If you need help putting together your ideas board then get in touch here.
Following a free consultation call I can build you a digital ideas board to suit you and you needs for the space. This service starts from £75 per room.