Mallika Dureja
Although moving into a new house can be one of life’s greatest pleasures, it can also be a time of uncertainty, particularly when it comes to furnishing and adorning the new place. How can you make your room appear its absolute best while also ensuring that it reflects your own unique sense of style? If you do a good job of it, you’ll wind up with a home that’s cosy and full of joy. If you do a poor job of it, you will end up with a mishmash of furniture, fabrics, and paint colours that will never come together to form a cohesive and aesthetically appealing whole. You’ll have a much better chance of success if you do a little bit of preparation and then follow the same steps that experienced interior designers take to complete a project.
Don’t Start in the Furniture Store
The piece of advice that you shouldn’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry because it causes you to make poor choices has been repeated by many people. The same advice remains true for furniture stores; if you suddenly find yourself with an empty house, don’t rush out to buy new furnishings. You absolutely need to get a sofa. However, if you choose the pink-striped sectional simply because you like it in the store, without taking measurements or considering how it will look in the rest of the room, you will be stuck with it. Because of this, the rest of the furniture in the room will have to revolve around the sofa, and if the sofa is too big for the space, the room will always appear off-kilter.
Begin your search for new furniture in the space that will eventually house it, equipped with a measuring tape and a notebook.
Know Your Measurements
It is essential that the scale of the furnishings correspond with the scale of the room. When placed in a cramped space, a large sectional couch can quickly become overwhelming, while slim chairs can get lost in an open-concept loft. Before you begin the design process, you should take measurements of the length and breadth of each room that you plan to decorate, as well as the height of the ceiling and any elements that might get in the way, such as stairs, columns, radiators, and other obstructions. In order to get ready for window coverings, it is also a good idea to measure the window apertures themselves, in addition to the wall space that is located below, above, and to the sides of each window.
“The first mistake that most people make is that they buy things that are the wrong size,” said David Kleinberg, founder of the New York interior design firm David Kleinberg Design Associates. “Sofas that don’t fit in the room, sofas that don’t fit through doorways, tables that are too small, desks that are too big, nightstands that hang into the doorway,” he continued. “The second mistake that most people make is that they buy things that are the wrong colour.” Taking the time to accurately measure your space can help you prevent encountering problems like these.
Create a Floorplan
Once you have the dimensions of the room, it is time to put them to use by creating a floor plan for your home that provides you with an overhead perspective of the entire structure. According to Alexa Hampton, president of Mark Hampton, an interior design firm based in New York City and founded by Alexa’s father, Mark Hampton Sr., “Every job should commence with a floor plan.” “You have to be familiar with the area.”
Drawing a floor plan the old-fashioned way, using paper, a pencil, and a measure, is one approach that can be taken. On the other hand, the vast majority of professional designers work with modelling software such as AutoCAD. There are apps such as Magicplan, Floor Plan Creator, and RoomScan Pro that fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes and aim to make it easier for homeowners to create simple floor plans. Some of these apps even automate measurements using the camera on your smartphone; however, it is important to double-check the numbers.
After you have the general layout of the room in front of you, you can begin to play around with the arrangement of the furniture, taking care to ensure that the footprint of each component is proportional to the size of the drawing.
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Decide How You Want to Live
This is the difficult portion, and there is no answer that is definitively correct or incorrect. The aesthetic of a room can be either warm or chilly, formal or casual, and any of these combinations is possible. Ms. Hampton advised, “You have to attempt to discern how you would like to live in a given space to the best of your ability,” which means “to the best of your ability.” “What are you going to be doing? How many individuals call that place their home? Are there any young ones? What are some of your goals that you’d like to accomplish with your life?”
For instance, the interior design of a home that is occupied by someone who frequently throws large dinner parties ought to contrast from that of a home that is inhabited by someone who dines out at restaurants every single night. A person who thinks only of crashing in front of the TV should have a different living room than someone who dreams of hosting lavish fundraiser events.
Copy the Pros
In order to hone your unique sense of style, you should peruse design books and magazines in addition to consulting internet resources such as Houzz, Pinterest, and Instagram. “Figure out the style that you respond to the most,” advised an interior designer based in New York City named Brad Ford, and compile a portfolio of pictures that inspire you the most.
Once you have pictures that appeal to you, Mr. Kleinberg suggested that you focus on the details. “See where pattern is used as opposed to where solids are used, and where colour can be successfully used or not,” he said. “See where colour can be used successfully or not.” It will also help inform everything from the kind of furniture you might like to a potential approach for window coverings. This is because it will help inform everything about the space.
Tape it out
Use painter’s tape in the actual space to outline where furniture will be positioned on floors and against walls to take the ideas on a floor plan one step further.
According to Anne Maxwell Foster, one of the owners of the New York City interior design company Tilton Fenwick, “We use blue tape on the floor to box out different components.” [Citation needed] “In what room will the carpeting be located? Should it be trimmed down in some way? How far does the dining table extend into the living room? Even though we have everything measured out to the sixteenth of an inch on a furniture plan, there is still something beneficial about being able to visualise it in the space and move around in it.
Develop a Budget
If you decide to splurge on an unanticipatedly pricey chair, then you will have less money available for the other aspects of your house. This is a mathematical fact that cannot be avoided. Mr. Ford advised, “You want to make sure that you’re being strategic about how you invest your money,” so listen to what he had to say. “A budget will provide you with a road map for how to allocate the costs of objects between different rooms,” He pointed out that you could still make an exception if you came across a one-of-a-kind dining table, but in order to pay for it, you would need to give some consideration to other areas in which you could reduce your spending.
Plan the Phases
Putting up sheetrock, refinishing hardwood floors, and painting ceilings are all messy jobs that require a lot of elbow grease. It is preferable to have this kind of work performed before moving any furniture or accessories into the space if at all possible. If this is not possible, however, it is still a good idea.
In the event that it is impossible to prevent, large pieces of furniture should be covered with plastic drop cloths, and small accessories should be packaged in boxes and taped shut for protection.
