Interior Designer’s Guide: Designing a Home from Start to Finish

Follow along as I take you through the process of designing a home from start to finish. You will learn my process as I design and stage five new show homes. I will give you tips on where to find inspiration, how to incorporate Feng Shui, Slow Design, Wellness, and the absolute must have tools without which I cannot design. Let’s begin with part one of a five-part series!

Step 1: Material Selections – find examples from images on the internet or magazines and create your palette from there. Take pictures of the items you have in your home that will remain through the move or renovation. Consider your finishes; are they rich wood tones, warm carpets, or area rugs. Think about window dressings; do they suit your style and taste. Finally, what about hardware finishes; can you include a variety of metal finishes (gold, silver, nickel and black).

Step 2: Staging Mood Boards – Create a mood board for each room. choose furniture selections and accessories for each room and place them on that mood board. This can be done with paper, glue, and scissors, or it can be done digitally. I do this for every project large or small and for every renovation I am doing. This is the one tool I use consistently.  This will save you time and money.

Step 3 – Space Planning – Draw your space out on graph paper or plug your measurements into a design software. Once you have the size of all your rooms and furniture, you can see if items will work together in your space. You can make decisions based on traffic flow and dimension limitations. You may find that the couch you cannot live without will have to stay on the showroom floor until you are in a space that can handle it.

Let me show you the finished product – enjoy!