5 Steps to Starting a Room Redesign

As a designer, I am often asked to redesign an existing room, to rethink the furniture placement, wall decorations, lighting etc. There are many ways to get the project moving but I usually like to do these five easy steps.

1) Assess the pros and cons of the room.

Make a list of what you like about the room and what you don’t like. Include the furniture and lighting you want to keep. Then be brutal with yourself and enlist your families help. See what they like and don’t like about the room and be willing to open yourself up to the possibilities that others may see.

For example:

Pros Cons

Lots of natural light Narrow room

New Sofa Wall Color

2) Take pictures from every possible angle, including furniture you may want to keep.

If you are hiring a decorator to help (please consider this!), this is one of the first things we do. Pictures help us determine how you use the room, what you are drawn to in style and when we go shopping, the pictures help us ensure we are staying with the character of the room.

Plus, it’s great to look at the before and after!

3) Determine how the room will be used.

What is the rooms main purpose? Is it a Dining room that somehow morphed into an office as well? It is a Living Room or a more casual Family Room? You cannot make the decision on how to decorate until you know how the room is used.

4) Draw the room on paper and fill in the furniture.

Take basic room measurements and draw the room on paper – your decorator will do this more formally and within scale. Use this drawing to help you place furniture so you can get an idea of what fits. This will help later with furniture shopping – you’ll know how big that coffee table can be for example.

If nothing else, it will save you from buying that 8 foot sofa for the 6 foot wall!

5) Pick color schemes

Decide on your colors, if possible. Not the details – Icy Blue verses Deep Silver Blue – but the colors you are drawn to. Do you love your yellow sofa? Are you a dark or light wood person? Do you like warm or cool colors? Your decorator will ask you these questions as well. Look around your home – what colors are in your home already? Do you love them? Are there colors you just want to rule out completely?

Throughout these steps, you need to be honest with yourself. Don’t be afraid to decide that you really don’t like that sofa anymore – as a designer we may be able to repurpose it with slipcovers or be reupholstered. Or it may have to go – that okay too!

Following these five steps will lead you in the right direction and ensure that you – and your decorator – make the right changes for yourself and your family.