155: Ways to save time and money when you redecorate.
If you’ve been following me on Instagram this week, you’ll have seen I’ve been banging on about the importance of visualising your space.
It’s really important.
Really, really important.
Why?
Because if you want to save time and money this is the one thing you can do that will make a difference.
Below I’ll share 3 easy ways to plan your space through creating a visual representation, but first let’s answer the important questions.
How will having a visual reference for my space save me money?
Too often we think we know what we want. You might have spent time trawling Instagram for inspiration or pinning on Pinterest, and it's easy to think we can just copy what we see there.
But someone else’s space isn’t yours.
And it’s not just about the size of the space or the light in the room, it’s also about how you feel in the space.
You might love the bright colourful interiors but if you have never lived with it, you might find it’s overwhelming to you and need to spend more money to pare it back.
Or maybe you want to try out neutrals - but that’s a bit boring so now you need to liven it up.
Even down to just a feature wall - you might see a wallpaper you like but once it’s up it just feels wrong.
It’s all money wasted.
You might have even picked your testers and tried them out and stuck to the plan you visualised in your head…
but when you get to the end, something feels off - something’s missing.
So, you start impulse buying to correct it, throwing whatever you can at the space to find the missing piece.
This can be a long and expensive process. Believe me, I’ve done it.
Having a drawing or mood board of your space before you start, doesn’t mean that you can’t still adapt and impulse buy a little, or change things up over time.
What it does mean though, is that because you’re clear on what you want to achieve and how the space is meant to look and feel, you’ll be more confident in your design choices and spend money wisely choosing finishes that will complete the scheme, rather than confusing it more.
How will having a visual reference for my space save me time?
I know, I’m asking you to spend more time putting together a sketch or a mood board and ordering samples and sticking them on your wall so you can look at them for a few weeks - which quite frankly sounds like spending a lot of time hanging about doing nothing.
But it does take a little bit of time to really get comfortable with a scheme - this is the time you can use wisely to try things out - try something new and see if it works for you, or experiment with different furniture in the space.
A little bit of patience here means that you won’t have to spend even more time re-doing things or hanging about more than once by the paint mixing station in B&Q (why is no one ever there when you need them, and it takes a good 10 minutes for them to eventually arrive?) so I know that will save you some time.
More than this, is that it does sometimes get overwhelming when you’re thinking about it all the time. It’s easy then to get fed up and do nothing at all - so your space sits undecorated and sad for even longer.
Even if you don’t plan to start right away, knowing where you are heading will give you focus and clarity to actually get the job done. You have something to work towards and that’s definitely a bonus.
So how do you do it?
1. Create a mood board.
You can do this in whatever way feels good to you but it’s the best way to experiment with the colours and textures you want in your space.
Saying that, try not to just throw everything on the table and hope for the best - start considering placement.
Think about
What colours look good next to each other; this will help you decide where things need to go in the room.
How much of certain fabrics and colours you want to include - this will help you identify which are key pieces and which are accents.
When it comes to paint, use large tester pieces and move them around the room so you can see how the light affects it.
2. Create a collage
Yes, a collage - but this isn’t primary school art, this is collaging for adults. And it’s fun!
If you’re googling pictures of furniture, why not try and arrange them in a way that means you can actually see how they would look if they were all together?
It’s easy then to swap things around or choose different items and colours if you need to.
You can take screenshots on your phone, crop them down and then either print them out to create your collage or use apps and programmes like PowerPoint or word, Photoshop or Canva to put them together.
Really simple, really effective.
3. Sketch it, colour it, draw it out.
There’s a reason why interior designers include a drawing of the scheme when they present it to you. Because it’s the best way to visualise a space in its entirety. Here you can see it all come together and it's such a useful thing to have - especially if you’re one of those people that can’t visualise in your mind at all.
If your art skills aren’t up to scratch though, don’t be put off, sometimes a simple sketch makes a difference.
But don’t forget, this is one of the services I offer, even if you’ve picked everything you want but just want to see it come together before you implement it - drop me a line here and I’ll help you get the clarity and confidence you need.
