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How to Start Your Next Interior Decorating Projects in 3 Easy Steps

Starting a new home design project can be daunting. Here are 3 considerations to ease into your next home refresh

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By House & Garden South Africa | February 5, 2024 | Interiors

With the start of the new year comes the opportunity to renew and refresh ageing elements of our homes. The desire for revived touches in our kitchens, bathrooms, and living areas means we are scouring Pinterest for inspiration and building our own mood boards for the perfect vision of our new design projects. However, starting a new design project in your home can feel daunting when the logistics, planning, and budgets challenge our interior design ideals.

But fear not, as we have three easy considerations that will help you ease into your next home design project this 2024.

How Do You Want the Room to Feel?

First decide how you want the space to feel. For example, if you know you want a space to feel cosy and warm or contain an ambiance of large grandeur. This will help you when looking at colours and materials.

Green kitchens remain a trending colour for kitchen design. Image: Supplied.

Pick a Focal Point

Pick a single element of the room that is most important to you as you will design around this: you may love the windows, which makes your curtains the room’s statement. Your home may contain a vintage fireplace with intricate mouldings and a spacious mantle for framed art of family heirlooms. You can then go back to the first tip and look at the colours and materials of the fabric that will help you create the right feel.

Once you have made that one big decision you can build the space from there and it will feel less daunting.

Pick one element that is most important to you and design around that. Image: Supplied.

Whatever You Do, Do Not Rush it

Take your time. Select paint, print and fabric samples and pin them up in the space for at least a few days. See whether you still love it every time you pass these swatches and samples as this will signal to you whether these ideas are the right ones for your space.

Stick a paint sample between a doorway and the light switch or pin a fabric sample on the arm rest or back of a chair to get both an aesthetic and tactile taste for your new material.

Take your time. Pick paint, print and fabric samples and pin them up in the space for at least a few days. Image: Supplied.