Decorating your home – simple to follow steps
Whether you’ve bought a new build or built your own place, being presented with such a large blank canvas to decorate can be overwhelming. You want your new home to look stylish, comfortable and be a reflection of who you are.
There is a lot of pressure to get it right, especially if you aren’t an expert or don’t have any experience with interior design. If you don’t plan to pay a designer to come in and take this job off your hands here are a few tips to get you started.
Pick The First Room
The thought of decorating a whole house is enough to paralyse even the most excited home decorator. Make a plan by choosing one room at a time.
I would suggest you start with the room you’ll be spending most of your time in which could be the living room, kitchen or bedroom depending on your lifestyle or whether you’ve got kids or not. Decide where you are going to start and plan the order you’ll do the rest of the house in from there.
Sketch Out A Floor Plan
If you’re a methodical planner you’ll love this bit, if you’re more of a “get on and do it” personality this might seem like an unnecessary hold up, but trust me you’ll save yourself time and money by doing this step. Have you heard the old saying about planning and preparation? 
I won’t repeat it but it is safe to say it’s better to have a well thought out plan than to get half-way through a project and realise that the brand new sofa you bought doesn’t fit where you want it to go.
If you really want to geek out at this stage or you can’t visualise the room on pen and paper there are plenty of apps that you can use to get a better visual idea of how your home is going to look. Here is a link to 10 of the best free virtual apps.
If you’re not techy and you want to have a real life feel, you can use boxes or crates as placeholders for your furniture. This will also give you an idea of how much physical space you’ll have to play with.
Choose The Furniture
Most people rush out and decide what colour paint they want on the walls and go from there. They then find themselves having to match everything to the colour on the wall. Choose the biggest piece in the room first, i.e bed/ sofa. The biggest piece in the room is usually the most important and most expensive.
That’s why it’s important to start with that one piece and work your way from there. In a dining room, start with the dining table. For your living room, choose your sofa first. In your bedroom, the bed and so on.
Pick Your Art
If you’ve got large walls and you want big statement pieces then it is vital to choose your art first. If you want the art to set the tone, atmosphere and feeling of the room choose this before you choose your colour palette for the walls and soft furnishings. 
Once you have decided on the paintings or peices you want in each room you can then pick a colour from them and use it as your theme. This will link all the pieces and really bring the room together.
This is what I do all day long – help people with colour. Yes, this begins with a painting but it’s surprising just how adventurous you can be and still create a beautfiul room. It all comes down to finding the right combination of colours, in the right ratios, for the way you want to live.
I can definitiely help you with that. I have also posted some helpful tip about ways to choose art for your home.
Layer Up
Now you’ve set the colour tone you can choose your wall and floor coverings to match. If you’ve read this far and you’re none the wiser call in a pro. If you can’t afford an Interior Designer to do a top to bottom project ask if they do an hourly consultation rate.
I don’t claim to be a design guru or an interiors expert (despite having had ten years of making abstract art work in people’s homes) but what I can help you with is choosing the right art for the right room. I’m happy to do a home visit to consult on the right size or the right colours I think would work with the size of the rooms, the design of the building and the lighting.
I can help you choose the art that can can be the roadmap to the rest of your design.
Get in touch – I won’t bite!
I love your idea of picking a room theme based on the painting you plan to put in those rooms. because my partner and I recently moved, our house has been looking a little bare and is in need of decoration. I love art so I’ve been looking to find small artists with great work that I can buy to start decorating my walls with.
We have an 8 meter void. We are renovating a house to contemporary style but the house has gobbled up most of our budget however large art with colour in the void is required. I can send a layout.
Hi Sharon. By all means – send away! Drop me an email to [email protected] … many thanks Ed