Novice Tips for Your First Home Design Project
You don’t know a wall sconce from a scone, and you’ve never really thought about flooring or fixtures before, at least not in any kind of detail, but you know your place needs an overhaul. So, where do you go from here? How do you figure out what colors and patterns look good together? How do you choose furniture? How do you even know what your style is? You can find down below 4 novice tips for your first home design project.
1. Start Looking
Start slow. Pay attention to interiors that appeal to you, whether you see them in real life, in movies, on TV, or online. For now, don’t worry about if they are something outrageous you couldn’t possibly reproduce in your own home. Instead, find a website or an app that will allow you to save photos to put together a good collection of what you like. Gradually, a sense of your tastes will start to emerge even if you can’t put a name to it or if you like multiple clashing styles. This will give you the information to modernize your home décor and proceed with the overall design project.
2. Consider Your Lifestyle
It’s also important to think realistically about your lifestyle and what you use your space for. For example, do you have small children or pets? Do you entertain often? What kind of entertaining do you do? Do you or others in your family work from home and need a dedicated office space? Are there accessibility requirements? Do you often have overnight guests? Answering these questions will help you make decisions as you move forward.
3. Create a Budget
Your next step is to create a budget so that you have an idea of what is possible. This will prevent a situation where you get deep into planning a certain type of design only to discover you can’t afford it. It might also help you narrow down what you want to do. However, you are not necessarily limited to just the cash you have in savings when it comes to paying for it. You could also look into personal loans. If you are taking this approach, think first about what would be an amount that you could comfortably repay and find a lender with a payment plan that suits you.
4. Consider a Professional
Your next steps here will depend on what your budget is like. If you have the money, you may be able to turn the entire process over to a designer. The photos you have collected up to this point and the information about your lifestyle will be helpful to them in figuring out how to go forward. On the other hand, depending on how much money you have, you might need to do most or all of the work yourself.
If you’re doing this on your own, there are apps that can help you with various elements, including visualizing how various choices will look in the actual rooms in your place. Another factor is what exactly you have planned in terms of home design. For example, getting new rugs, a different sofa, and painting the walls is a big difference from tearing out your kitchen and putting a new one in, which will almost certainly require professional help.
