Step 1: Analyzing Your Home

Before you can begin any project, you first have to look at your home and evaluate what is most important for you to design or redesign. If you do have a tight budget, you might want to concentrate your efforts on one or two living areas of your home. Once you have more money to work with, you can always go back and decorate other areas of your home.

Some people find interior decorating a lifelong process…

You may find you spend time redecorating your home throughout your life. That is one reason you want to decorate within a budget, so you do not end up breaking the bank during the process. When analyzing your home, you should take an objective view of your home. Sometimes this involves asking an outsider to walk through your home with you and recommend areas that need improvement.

Ultimately, you will decide what areas of your home to improve. Sometimes however, you will find working with someone may result in helpful suggestions (like adding shelving to reduce clutter). You may even find a friend that has experience with interior decorating. Working with a friend when analyzing your home is much less expensive than working with someone you hire to decorate or evaluate your home.

Common Sense Approaches

When you analyze your home, you are taking inventory of the items or aspects of your home that you like, and those you want to change. As you go through your home, it is important you take a common sense approach. Keep a pen and paper handy, and make sure you write down any ideas you have. For each room of your home you plan to decorate, you can create separate notes on separate pages.

That way you approach interior decorating using common sense and practical, organized methods. Now, there are two ways to approach analysis. If you analyze a new home, you will approach evaluation from a "whole house" perspective, trying to get the most bang for your buck. If you want to improve the look and feel of your current home, you can still analyze your entire home, but may spend more time concentrating on one or two rooms in your home you know need the most attention.

The New Home Approach

Analyzing your home is easy if you are working to decorate a new home. Take each room independently and discover what the most important areas are for you to focus on. As mentioned above, whether decorating for a new home or for an existing home, you must always approach interior decorating on a budget by focusing your attention on one or two rooms at a time.

When you buy a new home, you will have to analyze what items you already have that you can use in your home (like beds or sofas) and what items you need to buy to complete your home. If for example, you move to a larger home, you may need to buy some additional furniture for added rooms in your home. When working on a budget, you may use what you have already, and decorate rooms individually, one room at a time. If you try to decorate all at once, you may find you spend too much money and too much time worrying about budgeting for your home. Take one or two rooms, and make them the focus of your work.

Later, you can save money to decorate other or all the rooms in your home if this is your goal.

Redecorating an Existing Home

Most people prioritize their schedules and plans to decorate based on the rooms they feel need the most help. Often people want to decorate a single room in the home. Others may select a grouping of rooms, like the bedrooms, or a single bedroom to redecorate or decorate for a new arrival (like a baby).

For some people the rooms they focus on are the ones people are most likely to see on visiting. For example, you may want to improve the appearance of your living room or foyer. Others want to improve the functionality of rooms, like the kitchen. Perhaps you want more space in your kitchen so you can cook, but also entertain company. You may want to liven up your kitchen so it appears larger if you lack adequate counter space. Make sure as you walk through the rooms you want to focus on, you take notes of what items are most important for you to change.

Remember, as you walk through a home and start analyzing it, you may change your mind about what is and is not a priority. You may want to improve the look of your bedroom, or design a new bedroom for a new baby entering your life. Whatever you want to do, the key to your success is setting a budget. This applies whether you work with an existing home, or whether you plan to decorate a new home.

The budget should be the foundation for all decisions you make about interior decorating. Your budget will help you decide what items you must buy, and what items you can decorate with little attention or fanfare. You may decide to embark on some do-it-yourself projects so you save money and can spend money on areas that need the most attention.

Interior decorating can be expensive, but not if you take a logical approach to decorating.
Sometimes, some of the finest homes you see are those that use common sense approaches to decorating. Common sense begins with analysis of your home and establishing a budget to work with. Never forget that. Never step away from your budget, or you may find you plunge into debt.