With an area or room selected in your house… start planning your design!

Take your big picture answer to the original three questions:

• What are your favorite colors?
• What do you want people to feel when they walk in your home?
• What things do you have that you want to showcase – things you “love” or things that are just uniquely you?

And complete the following three steps for the first area in your home.

1.  Narrow the answers for your selected area.

For example, in my house I like bright orange, bright sky color blue, dark olive green, gray, crayon red, and yellow. But I also want my house to be a place where a person can feel calm in the midst of whatever life may throw at them. And we like some quirky things between my husband and I – a pop art robot, James Bond lithographs, black & white photography (black & white just about anything!).

But in one spot everything may be overwhelming – not calming!

I narrowed them for our second bathroom. (In real estate I learned that the two rooms that make the biggest impression on a person are the kitchen & the bathroom. So although, the living room/dining room is where people spend the most time in our house, the kitchen looking decent makes people comfortable to eat the food and the bathroom being clean reassures them that despite the toys and mess the house really is clean and you really are welcome!)

So, the second bathroom was the first finished room in our house. The following are my answers narrowed down for the particular space – the second bath.

• Color – yellow & gray
• Feel – cheerful, welcoming, clean
• Unique items – duck (because I think every bath needs one!) and paris b/w photos

The “feeling” of the room helped to determine the colors. Yellow is cheerful! And I associated black/white (gray) with clean clear space. What colors do you associate with the feel you want to portray? Not sure if you associate color with feeling… review your wardrobe choice or what your ideal choice would be. If you are going to host an event what are your favorite pieces to wear? What color are they? If you are in a happy mood, what’s your favorite color choice? There is also scientific bases for emotions provoked by color, but try to start with your choice and reactions to color

The unique items helped to develop a design for the room. The duck is fun and playful; the Paris b/w photos of the Eiffel Tower are more sophisticated. Combining these are ideas lead to the theme of the room.

2.  Begin to create with your pieces! Use the creativity you have – you do have it! – to start putting things together.

• What has to be in the space for function? Are these items going to be stored open or closed?
• What is going to be the most colorful piece in the room? The walls, a large drape or piece of artwork?
• Is there a pattern that you like or theme from one of your unique pieces that you want to develop?
• Are there anythings that you need to buy for function within the room?

3. Put everything together in the space or by the area where you are going to use it. You are not assembling or setting up  just viewing the “pile” of selected pieces all together. We’ll assemble, design, and finish it after we have sorted and finalized everything.

• What item is the most domineering? What stands out the most? This item, color will be the focal point so decide if you really like it well enough to see it as the prominent item or color every time?
• If there are multiple things that stand out, do they balance each other? Or do you need to narrow it down and leave something out?
  • In general, start with fewer bold items and then keep adding. It is easier to add the figure out what to take away – have you ever gone through the collection of stuff in your storage space! Somehow it accumulates well.

Ok.. Complete these three steps slowly. Give yourself at least a couple days or for a larger or prominent space do not be afraid to take a couple weeks to narrow your answers and gather your unique pieces. Next week will put it all together!