Get inspired to design your dream room! This step-by-step guide will walk you through the process, from gathering ideas to finalizing all the details.
Whether you’re renovating, or simply decorating an existing space, designing an entire room can feel like a daunting task. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made and, as you work your way through each one, it can be hard to know whether you’re making the best choices. When you’re putting together a room, there’s often a significant investment of both time and expenses involved in the process, so you want to be as sure as you can be that you’re creating a space that you’ll love for years to come. I thought it might be helpful to share my own design process from start to finish with you, so that you can feel more confident in putting together spaces in your home that you’re sure to love.
How to Design a Room
1. Gather Inspiration: This is always, always where I start. I can spend months (or even years) collecting inspiration images – bookmarking my favourite pages in design books, pinning Pinterest images, saving Instagram photos to categorized folders, even screenshotting stories that catch my eye. I do my best to gather it all up in one place at some point – usually a dedicated Pinterest board. I LOVE that Pinterest now allows sub categories on boards – I have created a Pinterest board for our Tudor home, with sections for each room in our home along with separate ones for extra ideas that don’t have a room to belong to yet, like lighting and wallpaper. I even pin relevant images from my save folders on Instagram or photos of my favourite pages from design books so that I’ve got everything all gathered up in one place and I can be sure that I don’t forget anything. It’s been the best way to organize my ideas.
Once you’ve got all of your inspiration images gathered up, it’s important to take some time to really look through them all. Note what you love about each image or space and why – is it the colours, the flooring, maybe a light or even just the general feel of a space. As you look through all of the images together, notice if there are any similarities or patterns that stand out – these are the best indicator of what you might be most drawn to as you start making design decisions.
2. Set a budget. It’s so important to go into a project with an idea of exactly how much money you are willing to spend. Whether you are you looking to do a $1000 room refresh, or a $10,000 renovation – you need to go into each project with a realistic idea of what you’re willing to spend to bring your vision to life.
3. Consider what pieces or elements are you working with: This could be a floor plan you cannot change, flooring or countertops you’d like to keep or even just furniture pieces you plan to bring into the finished space. You can’t move on to the next step until you know what you’ll be starting with.
4. Design a layout: Whether you’re moving walls and fixtures or simply figuring out furniture placement, you’ll definitely want to take your time playing around with different layouts for your space. We spent months working through various layouts for our second floor before feeling sure enough to commit to one (you can read more about that here). Layout changes can be costly, especially where construction is involved, so it’s really important to take the time to get this one right from the start. You can choose to draw things out yourself on paper or even tape them out on the floor with painter’s tape, but it’s most helpful if you can work with things at scale to ensure the right fit for each element within a space (my sister-in-law actually does design drawings, reach out if you’re ever looking for some help with this!).
5. Start with the biggest decisions first: Flooring, wall treatments, even the bigger furniture pieces – starting with the biggest elements in the space will help guide each decision that comes after it. Deciding on a few of the bigger elements is the perfect place to start as you move onto the next step.
6. Build a mood board: Mood boards are the easiest way to see how each little piece will work in the space as a whole. I’d say the number one mistake that people make when designing a room is that they tend to choose each element in isolation based on what they love most and often forget to consider how each of those pieces may or may not work together to create the look and feel they had been picturing for the space as a whole. It’s also really easy to loose sight of the overall look and feel you’d like to create when you’re choosing each element in isolation, people tend to gravitate to what they love most as they make each design decision and forget to consider how that might play into the design as a whole. Creating a mood board is the perfect way to test your ideas out and create an overall vision for the space that looks and feels just as you hope. It gives you a chance to pull together each individual piece into one visual space that you can refer to as you make your individual design decisions. It’s also an easy way to test out different design ideas you might have, so you can be more sure about your purchases. I shared a super simple tutorial on creating a mood board here.
7. Collect samples: I can’t stress how important it is to collect samples of all of the materials that you plan to bring into your room – flooring, textiles, wallpaper, paint, wood tones, etc. Bringing samples home with you allows you to see each item within the actual space (you’d be surprised how different flooring, wallpaper, and paint can look in different spaces). Even more, when you have physical samples of each item, you can better see how each element works together within the design as a whole.
8. Choose your paint colour last! I think people tend to choose their paint colours too early in the design process. Textiles are far more limiting in colours than paint will ever be – choosing a jumping off point such as a rug, pillow, or window coverings that you love will help to guide the colours and textures you pull into your design, including the right paint colours to bring it all together.
I hope this step-by-step guide helps you to feel a little more confident as you make changes to spaces around your home too!
Wishing you SUCH a lovely day!
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Emily Radkie says
Loved this post! I feel like this should be second nature to me, but reading through this was such a great reminder to slow down and really embrace the process as opposed to rushing through the finish line.
Kristi says
Thanks Emily! I’m glad you enjoyed this! I know this is likely similar to how your brain works through things already, but I’m so happy you still found it helpful!