Functionality and Identifying Your Existing Space

You will need to ask yourself more questions at this point. Each room will have it’s own functions and you need to establish this with pencil and paper (or on the computer). Ask yourself how many people will be accommodated in this space and what are the activities that will go on there---this is where life style fanaticizing will play a role but you also need to plan for your life as it is up until this point as far as your activities go as well. It is good to plan for some new habits and activities but you don’t want the entire design to be based on how you
MIGHT live. You could end up being unhappy in the end if you do this. Old habits die hard. So make a sheet for each room that you can store with your binder listing this information for each room.

An important part of the design process is documenting information about the existing space you have to work with.

You can do this using a 12 or 25 ft measuring tape and some graph paper.

Graph paper will help you to scale your space so that you can draw an outline of your room. This is important for establishing traffic patterns and furniture arrangements. And you will need this--- An important part of buying the right size pieces of furniture is knowing what will fit. So you want to make sure that this information is correct and charting it on a graph sheet is a good way to be able to look at your space. Then by using thin sketch paper overlays you can try
different configurations of furniture layouts saving the original graph drawing beneath. Or you can invest in a program for your computer for creating these layouts depending on how extensive your design will be and how large your home is. This will be you first step in selecting furniture.

Developing a Color Palette

Color is one of the most important elements in your home interior. All sorts of research has been done on color psychology and how color affects us.

Once you’ve started to see a pattern of what you seem to be attracted too while shopping and looking through books you should put some time into specifically looking at colors. At this point don’t worry where you will put these colors just
start pulling together a family of 3-7 colors. You can have light and dark shades
of the same colors but you should have at least 3 basic colors. Some colors will be more important than others and these are decisions that you can make later.
First it’s just important to start the process.

There are different families of color and you can get an idea by looking at samples in the paint stores, or even Home Depot and Lowe’s have a pretty good selection of colors in the paint department that will help you to start pulling some colors together.

There are also some on line sources like Colourlovers

http://www.colourlovers.com/

And Paint companies have some good suggestions for colors palettes too.
http://www.behr.com/
http://www.sherwin-williams.com/do_it_yourself/index.jsp

Really feeling comfortable Wikipedia has lots of info on the subject of color.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism_and_psychology

Just remember to give yourself time. Get a few colors that you like and tape them up around your house in places that you will see them everyday---like the bathroom or the kitchen---maybe even your front door!

How to Identify What You Like and What is Your Decorating Style?

I guess shopping would be an obvious suggestion, but shop well and make notes about what you like and don’t like. Take a camera with you so you can photograph things that you like or want to remember.

Next I suggest going to a large book store like Border’s or Barnes and Noble that have a large magazine section.

Don’t just buy every design magazine. Take some time and flip through, if you feel like you are seeing things that appeal to you then buy the magazine---buy several. Names to look for are Veranda, Town and Country, Southern Living, Metropolitan Home, and House and Garden. There are also local or regional House and Garden magazines. In my area we have Orange Coast and Orange County. These homes feature advertising by interior designers who’s ads many times feature one or more rooms in homes they have designed. These can also be places to look for ideas.

And of course take a look in Architectural Digest and Florida Design, but generally these magazines are over the top for most people. You may find things in any and or all of these magazines that appeal to you.

As you are looking through the magazines make sure you let yourself react to what you are seeing. Tear out pictures of what you like and some of what you DON’T like and mark them with sticky notes with your comments like---I like the table in this room or the sofas in that room. Also check out the lighting used in each room setting. Do you see recessed lighting? Lamps? Track Lighting? Lighting is huge in it’s role for creating a “feeling” in a room. Materials and finish of your furnishings can look different with different types of lighting. Make lighting notes too.

Also check out the internet for photos that might be what you’re looking for-
Photos from the internet can be printed out for your idea resources.

Collect your ideas into a binder. Buy a large binder and add dividers with tabs
For each room. Also a pad of paper and several sizes of sticky note pads. Also get a small shopping bag you can use for collecting fabric samples or any larger items you might find. Organizing the pictures will help to organize your thinking.

Make sure and put your contact information in the front of the binder should you ever leave it somewhere. You are going to invest your time and energy into the contents of this book. Many of you will keep this book for many years depending on your goals.

How Do I Get Started- Interior Design Seems So Overwhelming!

For those not hiring a professional designer, much of the pressure for the “perfect” design falls on the woman, in the context of a traditional married couple. (Gosh I guess the idea of “traditional” is a by gone but we’ll start their for the sake of this article)

Not every woman is a born Interior Designer. And frankly most women are so absorbed in their careers that they don’t even have time to think about where to start when it comes to planning the inside of their home. Yet many retain a feeling of failure if they can’t whip out a great idea and execute it with dramatic flair that expresses the essence of who they really are J

That’s a lot. So my point is that there are many emotional and cultural issues that go along with the “getting started” part of planning your own home interiors.

And then there are those that think that any creative impulses that come out of them should be expressed in their home environment. Better for using these instincts for getting dressed in the morning.

If you can try and ignore the urges to break out in purple walls and black and white floor tiles just to show people who you really are that would be a good thing! :-) Design is really a process that takes many things in consideration and developes along a path. And once you have laid the groundwork the decisions, and there will be many, will flow much more easily. And they will flow from a better place than that of just self expression.

Remember the overall goal will be the end result. It will be expensive, whether you spend it all today or over the course of years. And remember an even more expensive approach is one that is unplanned and poorly executed. Mistakes mean that you must spend even more to undo the damage of the mistake so that’s why I am such an advocate of planning.

I have walked into many homes that the clients had been hypnotized by a GREAT deal only to end up later with a gorgeous silk sofa so large that you can barely manage to walk around it in the room. Or a fancy custom made sofa that yes the style was made by the dimensions you requested except that no one bothered to mention the importance of seat depth and you’ll remember this every time you perch on the edge to drink your tea because the throw pillows take up the entire sofa.

So it really pays to do a lot of not only thinking but planning for what you really want to end up with in your home. Try to keep your emotional impulses to a minimum.

The process of designing your home should help you to define yourself more too. We rarely take time to get to know ourselves but this is one opportunity that can have more than emotional rewards. This is a chance to know who you are and where and how you want to live!

Interior Design - What is Life Style and How Can I Create It?

Furnishing your home use to be a matter of going down to Sears
or the local furniture store and finding that sofa that was on sale-
and then maybe add a recliner chair and a couple of tables and that’s it!

Now we find after decades of viewing sophisticated home and garden magazines that we are expected to have a beautiful abode that everyone will want to come and admire.

That’s a lot of pressure isn’t it? And in today’s monetary terms it just cost a lot more for that admirable look too. So the decisions about what you are going to put inside your house to facilitate your relaxing “quality time” away from work has become even more important.

And then there is Lifestyle—Furnishing your home so the “lifestyle” of your dreams came come to life. The most ready example that comes to my mind would be the bachelor “pad”. That is definitely an example of a home furnished for a specific lifestyle that includes specific activities and levels of gratification from the lifestyle.

While to me, please know that the idea of a “Bachelor Pad” seems very much like a caricature of a lifestyle but I hope the example helps you to get the point.

Many people have worked hard for years and finally have their dream home without a clue of what it is they really want to get back from their home from an environmental standpoint. They look through Magazines and see the pretty pictures but have a difficult time trying to translate the ideas to their humble abode. And frankly most people have worked so hard that their concept of “leisure” time is very limited to begin with. So mostly they have just fantasized about it. But now that the boomers are reaching retirement and people are starting to slow down and they really are going to have more time for leisure time spent in their homes.