Enjoy Your Living Space to the Full

A key factor to successful interior design style is the reflection of the occupants personalities and life styles. Once this has been achieved people will be able to relax and enjoy their living spaces to the full.

The budget should also be given very careful consideration; most of us would love to live in homes which are filled with bespoke furniture and fixings, in reality there are not many who can afford to do so!

However, all is not lost–it is possible to recreate and emulate many interior styles on a more affordable budget. One of the key factors here is to plan each room carefully.

Make a sample board in order for you to focus on styles, textures and colours which compliment or coordinate with each other. Sample boards are easy to put together:

Make a different board for each room.

Browse through interior design articles and cut out pictures of all the things which appeal-irrespective of the cost.
Request fabric samples from retailers and add these to your collection of images.

Ask for flooring samples; either for blinds or carpets.

Gather paint colour charts and select two or three base colour cards. The type which has a main colour in a variety of different tones are best.

Once you have a collection of samples and images concentrate on separating them into the different rooms of your home. Many people prefer to only select pictures and samples for one room at a time; I find this difficult, because it’s almost guaranteed that if I’m looking for bedroom images I will come across ‘just the thing’ I was looking for to suit the lounge or dining room! I choose to randomly cut pictures and gather samples as and when I see them otherwise I can rarely find them again.

Lay the images and samples out on a board, a stiff piece of card will do-make sure it’s a neutral colour background so as not to detract from the colours of the samples and images. Try and keep things in order, for example place the flooring samples at the bottom of the board, lighting and lampshades at the top.

Once you have a rough plan laid out walk away-make coffee or leave the room for a while. When you return to the board you will probably find you re-shuffle things about, remove or add pictures or samples. This is all part of the fun with sample boards, experimentation, changing, being inspired before you spend any money!

Once you are happy with the colours, textures and overall layout take a long hard look at each of the items; if your budget does not allow for all brand new or bespoke items remain positive and set out to track down and locate similar pieces which are available from the high street retailers or gone online-there are some great bargains to be found by shopping online. In fact many things you find online are not available in the high street, making your choice more unique!

Online retailers have some great deals on their range of fabrics, curtains and bedding. Be inspired by patterns such as ‘Rene Mackintosh’ designs. Use colours which tone well on the walls and select a couple of accent colours from the fabric to use for accessories such as rugs and throws, in this example the russet colour would look great as an accent colour.