Where to start- redecorating entire house

[HappyGoLuckyGo]

Hi everyone, from the summer we’ll be redecorating the entire house. How do I even begin to the interior design??

It’s actually a flat made up of the top 3 floors of a Victorian terraced house. There’s a chance we may be able to purchase the ground floor and join them all up, but for now that’s a pipe dream. I’m currently working out the floor plans for the two scenarios- owning or not owning the GF.

But how do I start the interior design?? Colour palette, or choose flooring? Furnishings?

The work will need to be done room-by-room more or less as we’ll be living there, working full time, have a baby etc. Any advice welcome!

spend a few hours on Houzz.com making ideabooks (room by room) by clicking on everything you like. You'll start to see themes emerging.

LOVE Houzz, thanks for the suggestion! I only flick through it occasionally at the moment...

I have particular neutral paint colours in matt and eggshell that we have used in a lot of rooms. I keep it simple tbh as I get bogged down in detail. I'm practical rather than creative but everything is harmonious.

1. Start with what you've got - the features of the rooms (cornicing, windows, fireplaces?) if it's a blank canvas then that informs the design too as you'll need to add some features and focal points, either through reinstating original features or using decor and furnishings.

1. BUDGET! how much money you have to do this will determine what you can change and what you have to keep and therefore work around.

1. What items do you either love so much you have to use or can't afford to replace? It might be a painting, a vase or a rug or it equally might be a clunky brown sofa that you're not fond of but can't justify replacing right now. These are the things that will both inform, and shape your design.

1. What's your vibe? Scandi modern, french vintge, bold and colourful? As suggested above start a Pinterest or Houzz folder and tag what you love. Once you've done that, print them out and physically lay them out on the floor along with any magazine clippings / fabric samples / wallpaper samples that have spoken to you and see whether there is any cohesion.

1. Think very carefully about how you live. If you never cook then there's not much point spending lots on the kitchen, or if you love long hot baths then you need to factor that in. One of the most common mistakes I see is when people go for style over substance - particularly when it comes to things like choosing sofas, the damn thing has to be comfortable!

I'd be happy to have a look at your floor plans if you want to post them up - along with some pics of any key features / quirky bits 😊

I'm with Surf, them's good recommendations.

What I'd add is budget your time as well as your costs. Is this a one year plan or a ten year plan?

Plan the order you are going to tackle things. Is the kitchen your most important room? Can you get anything done while off on holiday to reduce disruption? Remember hallways will get heavily trodden while you work on other rooms, so probably best left to last.

We started with the living room, then beds, then bathroom, then kitchen, then the rest - box room/halls/stairs/etc. One room at a time. But if your situation means you can do a whole floor at a time, eg you've got two bathrooms on different levels or enough rooms you can repurpose as beds, that gives great savings in time through efficiency at a cost of higher disruption.

Either way, plan your path around the house.

@IsThereRoom That sounds like the sort of approach we want to take! How did you choose your colours?

@SurfnTerf Amazingly helpful, thanks! I’ll reply to your points when’s I’m on my laptop, it’ll be easier. Will be firming up the floorplans with DH this Sat, so will post them after that if you don’t mind- would be great to get views from fresh eyes!

@Spoonblender, great point. I’d say it’s a 2-3 year plan, I’m under no illusions that it always takes longer than you expect, but we don’t want to live in a building site for ages. I was thinking re the bathroom point, because we have two, but actually does it make more sense to move out for a week or two (in with local family, for example) and do both at once?

Then initial choice was painful and took match pots galore. Ended up with a range of "period " colours as they were a bit more subdued and suited the old house we had. Now I just use the colours because they work with our furniture ande I like them in our current modern house. When they get discontinued I,ll be annoyed, lol!

We have added over the years so it's not all one colour throughout, but it might look better if it was!

The range of colours I started from came from a favourite fabric.

Hello! Op we are the same, having just bought a house with very dated decor. I've picked a palette I want to run through the house so that I don't have randomness in each room. I'm planning to base it around white, navy, pale grey and splashes of mustard. I've set up a Pinterest board for each room and pin images as I see them. HouZz is a brilliant website too.

We did this a year or so back. We had done work to the house so moved out but had to paint/decorate every single room.

great advice here already. I would add:

See if you can find a style you really like. Pinterest and houzz are great for this. We found a designer we loved, bought 2 of her books and literally brought them with us when picking out paint/carpet/furniture and kept referring to them as the type of look we really wanted.

Measure everything very carefully. Most of the furniture I bought for the house years before was too big - I'd fall in love with a sofa or a chair and not think about the size in the space.

I picked one fairly neutral colour (pale yellow) for the hallways/stairs and then did different colours in various rooms - quite deep dark colours in the bedrooms. I bought LOADS of sample pots and painted pretty large samples on the walls to check if they were the right colours. Colour on a card differs hugely from the wall.

We have an old house but it only had crown moldings/cornices in the drawing room. We added them in the hall, family room and our bedroom and it made a huge difference.

Don't "finish" everything. I found that I needed to live in the rooms for a while before deciding the final things - like where to put a lamp or a vase or a bowl etc.

Thanks, using a fabric is a good idea! Turns out DH think it’s “obvious “ that you’d only ever decorate your house with pastel colours (I’d mentioned a bright colourful playroom at one point), so we’ll brainstorm together to get a sense of a scheme! I’ve already got a few ideas though...

@peachypetite That sounds great! At the moment the whole place is white. Like, EVERYTHING. I think the living room has a couple of pale blue walls? But it’s really an open book for us, which is great. I’d definitely like to keep the sense of light, just add a bit more personality.

Thanks @pallisers, that’s really helpful! How long did it take to do one room, start to finish including flooring, if you don’t mind me asking? Appreciate it’ll vary by size and we won’t have moved out for most of the rooms, if any. Feeling a bit daunted when I think about it like that...!

Happy, my schedule probably won't help you as we were doing huge building work to the house at the same time (small extension, new bathrooms, kitchen, beams going in for support etc).

One thing is if you are ordering furniture or carpets, you need to do give a fair bit of lead time (which is why we moved back in with no sofa, and mattresses on the floor :)) for ordering.

I was really daunted too - had put off the renovation for years because I couldn't imagine how to start. I worked with a designer - nobody fancy or expensive - but she really helped me get started. What I learned from her is not to wander around shops. Instead pick a shop, make an appointment with someone there to discuss what you are getting - if you are buying 2 carpets or 2 sets of bathroom fittings, or more than one piece of furniture, or several pots of paint you are a good customer for them and they will want to help - and do it all in one go. Also she would say to me "look there are dozens of options but lets limit it to these 5" which also helped a lot. otherwise it is overwhelming.

And finally the best money I spent was on what is called closet systems here in US. It was the builder who told me to do that. I got a professional in to measure every wardrobe/coat cupboard and install a storage system in each. It has transformed our storage, especially in the hall cupboard for coats/boots etc.

@SurfnTerf, thanks again - am just having another read through.

1. Not too many key features; I want to reinstate a Victorian fireplace in at least two rooms and would like to add back the cornice (cornicing? Cornices?) to get back some of the original character. I think a big challenge will be merging the attic conversion, which is very modern, with the rest of the house in a harmonious way.

1. Budget is relatively unlimited. We want it RIGHT, we want it to add value and to be pleasant to live in, and I don't like wasting money. Beyond that, we don't need to worry about it too much; very fortunate in that respect.

1. What we won't be replacing... Any of our "fancy" kitchenware, so we need space in the kitchen for that, and the sofa and armchair in the living room. I think that's literally it!

4/5. You make good points re style and lifestyle. I was thinking about that for the baby's room actually yesterday, thinking carefully about what we USE in his room now, what improvements would be beneficial, and what seems like a good idea (e.g. chest of drawers) but we don't actually need (better to put shelves in the built-in wardrobes)

@pallisers The storage guru sounds genius... I don't know whether such a thing exists in London, I'll look into it! Thanks for the tip re shopping, I think it's a great point - and with limited time on weekends to make these decisions, plus a baby in tow, plus a DH who isn't hugely interested in interior design, I think it will help to make the process as painless as possible!

If you go onto the Farrow & Ball website they have great tips for this. They recommend choosing a palette so it doesn't jar when you go from one room to the next, and that adjacent rooms look good together when both doors are open.

They have various neutral schemes, and then suggest which accent colours work with which neutrals.

Nice username Fab, thanks for the tip - am having a look at their site now, and ironing out the final floorplan details to "sell" it to DH this weekend! Excited to get started!

You’re welcome! I’m addicted to the F&B site.