Your Quick Guide To Planning A Room Makeover.

Planning a room makeover can be quite an overwhelming experience especially if you don’t have a fresh clean slate, so I wanted to create this starting guide to help you get started on the process. (Quick note: this was another one of my more recent posts on my previous blog and I wanted to share it here also, because it's still as valuable as it was before).

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I have always loved interior design ever since I can remember. I’m not interested in fashion, but when it comes to wall colours alongside decorative pieces, I could spend all day in a home ware store like someone would a clothes shop. I loved watching “Changing Rooms” in the evenings when I was younger then “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” came in my prime teen years, and I was absolutely in love with it. I also grew up spending hours at the weekends playing “The Sims” with building and decorating the house being my favourite part of the game.

When we first started working from home, we had to quickly turn our unorganised spare room into a temporary office and the more time I spent time in the room, the more ideas I have had for how I wanted to style it in the future. It’s a room that I had seen for so long as “that room that we need to organise” to “that room that I really want to make into a nice space”. Spending so much time in a room other than the bedroom or the living room, can really give you a mass of creative ideas and before we had to work from home, I just thought “Oh, I’ll get around to it eventually”.

I believe there are a number of points you really need to consider before starting any decorating or purchasing process, six to be exact and I’ve listed them below.

Is it a priority?

When you’re starting with any project, whether it’s to do with work or your personal life, you can’t expect to jump in head first and do everything all at once. For example; if you really need a wardrobe because your chest of drawers isn’t holding all your clothes, those bedside tables that you really want, may have to wait. You’ll also probably want to plaster the walls and paint (or wallpaper) the room first before bringing any new furniture in or you will want to look at how much you can afford to spend before you start buying any materials.

What is your style?

If you know your style, you’re pretty much good to go on this front. However, if you have no idea where to start, Pinterest and Instagram will be your best inspiration. It’s best not to try and go for “the style of the moment” because we all know how fast that changes and unless you want to keep decorating, it’s better to try and find a style that fits you, rather than trying to fit in with what's in right now.

What size is the room?

Knowing the size of the room is one of the most important things you need to know straight away because it’s a huge part of the decorating process. There is nothing worse than seeing furniture that you fall in love with or searching for that perfect wallpaper, but not being able to buy it straight away because you don’t know if the furniture will fit or how much wallpaper you will need.

We’ll take a bedroom for example; you may love your bed but want to change your bedside tables and your wardrobe so you have to take into consideration the size of the furniture you currently have and if you are able to buy something bigger. Two questions that you have to ask yourself also if you’re purchasing a large piece of furniture is will it fit through the door and can I get it upstairs? We all remember that famous scene from “Friends” where Ross shouts ‘pivot!’ (One of my favourite episodes!) but it’s an important lesson to still remember so many years on. You may have to build your furniture in the room, and in that case, it’s completely fine but if you’re having to bring something through the house and up the stairs, just make sure you can do that without damaging anything.

What are you planning to keep in the room?

If you’re starting a room from scratch, almost like moving into a new build, it’s so clean and fresh; this won’t be something that is relevant but if you’re re-decorating a room entirely, then you need to choose what you want to keep within the room. (I touched on this slightly above!)

What is your budget?

This reflects back to my suggestion of looking at Pinterest and Instagram. Often we can come across images of these gorgeous houses with all the trimmings but they will be from multi-million pound houses and sometimes you feel like you need to spend lots of money adding to the decor. That can be the dangerous thing with taking your inspiration from social media, but as long as you know from the get-go that you only need to spend what YOU can afford, and not what you THINK you should spend. It might be the case for many people, I know it is for me; that you have to decorate in stages. You might be able to plaster, paint and wallpaper the room but you can’t afford to furnish it just yet and that’s completely fine because that’s what you can afford to do. You’ll also need to think about cost if you’re bringing in anyone external too. If you can do everything at once, that’s also great, but don’t feel pressured to do that if you don’t have the means to. Getting yourself into debt is something that you don’t want to do, all for the sake of a room make-over.

Are you being realistic?

This should be the last question you ask yourself and if you say no to any of the above questions, you have to re-evaluate. If you’re not giving yourself enough time, if you have set your budget too high or if you’re not happy with where the process is going; take a step back and question why it’s not realistic.

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As mentioned, we recently have re-decorated our own spare room into an office and while we're not completely finished, I'll pop back in another post and speak about what I learned throughout the process. I hope these tips can help you zone in on what you are really looking to do, before you go out to buy all your materials or truly flesh out all your ideas.

Have a fantastic day!