Home Decorating Plan: 5 Steps

Developing a home decorating plan should be your first step in making decorating changes to your home. A plan will help you to focus on what changes are to be made and you can develop a budget for each room. Depending on the changes you intend to make, decorating a room can become expensive. Without a plan and a budget, you will have the tendency to spend more than you should and you may not be able to complete all your projects.

To develop your decorating plan, you should:

1. Determine the scope of your project

How many rooms do you plan to decorate? Does the entire room need redecorating or can a few accessories or changes in furniture meet your needs. If you want to decorate all the rooms of your home, you should set priorities.

You should start a notebook to collect ideas. Identify those items that you will keep. Identify the items that you want to highlight such as architectural features.

Do you intend to knock down a wall to make a room larger or do you want to divide a large space into another area?

You should consider the individual needs of your family members.

2. Determine the style or focus of the room or your home

You should focus on why your decorating the room or your home? Is there a particular style or feeling you want to convey?

You should begin by looking at the space you have to work with, the design of the room, and then start collecting ideas from magazines, books, and on the Internet. Organize your ideas by room. Collect pictures, pieces of fabric, and color samples. You should focus on the first room you plan to change. If this is the living room, you may want to establish your color palette and carry it through to the remaining rooms of your home.

Do you have a particular style in mind? Contemporary? Southwestern? English Country? Collect ideas for the particular style. Including the family in decorating the rooms of the house will go a long way for family harmony.

Make a sketch of the room and copy it several times. Use it to place furniture and other accessories. Take it with you when you window shop for paint, fabrics, furniture, and accessories.

3. Window shop at home improvement stores, furniture stores, and accessory shops

With your idea file and sketch in hand, visit home improvement stores, furniture stores, fabric stores, and accessory shops. If you live in a city that has a design center, go there, too.

Look at the various paints, window treatments, and flooring that you can use in your rooms. Collect samples and swatches to take home so you can take the time to see how the various colors, fabrics, and patterns will look in your room. You can also purchase a quarter yard of fabric at a low price to drape over furniture to see how it will look.

4. Determine your color palette

Your color palette will develop as you collect ideas and swatches. A fabric will lead you to a paint color and you will start to put them together. When you have collected what you feel are enough samples, it is time to lay them out and start deciding on your color palette.

Will the room be dark? Or will it be light? Do you want warm colors or cool colors? Do you need a neutral color to bring them together?

5. Decide on what you intend to do

You can go on looking for colors, swatches, and pictures forever but that does not get your room decorated. You have to stop and make a decision. Choose the colors and patterns you like most. You will need to make selections based on contrast and pattern. Put them together and select the one that best fits your room. Try out what you have collected in the room.

Some paint stores have large paint samples you can tape to your wall to see how it will look. Layout your sketch and the samples you have collected on a table so you can see them all together. Drape fabrics over the furniture to see how they look with your wall color and how the patterns will look in your room.

Choose your colors based on the look you love. Do the colors represent harmony in the room? How do you feel surrounded by these colors? Can you live with them for a year? Two years, or more? When you answer yes to these questions, you will have chosen your color palette and have a visual idea of your room will look like.