How to Start Designing Your Home

Now this is a topic I can really get stuck into. Perhaps you’ve recently moved into a renovation project, or your home of a long time isn’t working for you and needs redesigning. Whatever brings you to my blog firstly thank you, and secondly I hope you take something away from my tips to start designing your own home. This blog will delve into how to begin; follow my tips to carry out your research and take action to move from drab to fab. I’ll share more tips in future blogs on individual room design, using emotion to inform colour and style and there’s a special blog coming up on floor planning for single story homes. For now here’s my top ten tips.

1) Pain Points

These are the problems that crop up day after day, listing these problems is your starting point to making significant improvements for your home and lifestyle. Unfortunately to identify these you need to spend some time in your home (even if it is uncomfortable). A few examples of common pain points include lack of or unpractical storage, the direction in which doors open, the flow from room to room, for example walking through rooms laden with shopping bags to get to the kitchen, or an internal wall that blocks natural light from pouring into your living area. It shouldn’t be hard to identify these frustrations after spending some time in your home.

2) Essentials and Desirables

Whilst you’re following my first tip note down what you can’t be without in your home (essentials) and what would be the icing on the cake (desirables). For example, you may have recognised the absence of a downstairs toilet is a pain point for you, therefore this would become an essential requirement for your renovated home. You might be making changes to your family home and want to ensure you have room for pushchairs, highchairs, and piles of wellingtons. Stick your list up on the wall and add to it as you get acquainted with your home.

3) Floor Plan

There are many ways a footprint can be divided and make or break the flow and function of a home. Consider it the cogs of a well-oiled machine. Making layout changes could be possible, so when considering your perfect layout take your footprint and imagine you could remove all the walls and re-position them to create your ideal plan. Maybe moving your kitchen from the front to the back of your house would improve your lifestyle in your home, perhaps if you want to watch your children play in the garden whilst you make the tea, this could be an avenue to explore with a builder and structural engineer. Don’t let the way you live in your home be dictated by the way the previous owners did. If you have a single-story home you have further options, what was once a lounge could become a bedroom and vice versa, I’ll follow this blog with specific advice for bungalow owners but check out the Chestnut Master bedroom project for some inspiration.

4) To extend or not to extend?

Whilst considering the floorplan, if it’s possible, extending or not extending is a question to consider carefully. Really carefully. Often homeowners battle with their homes and believe more space is the answer, particularly ground floor living space, but what if a reconfigured space (and maybe less ‘stuff’) is the solution and a better investment of money? If you haven’t watched Your Home Made Perfect and gasped as walls disappear and reappear then you have some homework to do. You know that feeling when you redecorate and take everything out of a room, and it feels bigger? Imagine taking everything, including the walls, out of your space and starting from scratch. I’ve been in properties where extending has in fact created a long dark corridor of a home, it pays to consider changing what you already have before making your home bigger.

5) Size

Bigger is not always better. Following on from my last tip think about how to distribute your space room by room, can you determine how much space is actually required in individual rooms? Perhaps you have a very large spare bedroom and a pokey bathroom, can you take some of that bedroom space to create a beautiful functional bathroom? Maybe you like that cosy feeling of a small lounge where you simply lay out and relax so you can increase your kitchen and dining space where a table is needed? Maybe you’d like to remove the walls and open your space completely, searches for “open plan kitchen living room floor plan” were up 400% from 2020 to 2021 – and they’re up 6285% when compared with searches from 2019. If you prefer a divided space you will need to determine how much space is needed for each room to function successfully.

6) Room Identity

Consider the purpose of your rooms, do you need five bedrooms for your family of three? Do you need three bathrooms, or can you include a jack and jill set up (where two bedrooms use one bathroom)? If you divide your monthly mortgage payment by number of rooms how does it feel paying that amount for what could be an empty room? Could you use the rooms differently? Dual purpose rooms are on the rise as we design our homes to work hard, for example a spacious office that doubles up as a spare room by simply adding a sofa bed or a bootility (utility and boot room).

7) Light

An aspect not to forget is the direction of natural daylight. Where does it come in at all times of the day? I’d encourage anyone wanting to make significant changes with walls and windows in the first six months of being in a home to be patient as you need to observe the areas of brightness and darkness. Keeping a diary or snapping some photos throughout both sunny and cloudy days is a wise move. You might just identify a gorgeous sunny spot you want to make the most of in a new living area or in my case an entrance way that receives beautiful evening sunset, such a waste!

8) Views

This is another factor to consider when working out your ideal floor plan. Take a look at what you can see from your static places; where you sit to have your morning coffee, where you watch your favourite shows, where your bed is positioned in the bedroom. Is there a view you’re missing out on? If the window was on an alternative wall would you benefit from seeing your blossom tree or a beautiful horizon? Again, try and visualise all the walls coming down and starting again to maximise your surroundings or conceal something that isn’t so easy on the eye.

9) Colour

Did you know that colours evoke different emotions? It is scientifically proven that sleep is improved in a blue room, whilst red has been shown to increase blood pressure. The psychology behind colour is fascinating and worth researching if you want to make a decision that will stand the test of time. Pay attention to how you want to feel when you are in a room, what colour comes to mind for that emotion? Ensure you sample your preferred colours on every wall and revisit the room throughout the day over bright and gloomy days. Remember if you have a north facing house, the light will bring out the cooler tones in paint, so you may want to steer clear of blues and greys opting instead for colours with warm tones. You can read a great Farrow and Ball article on how light affects colour.

10) Style and Inspiration

We are constantly flooded with inspiration from platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Houzz, sometimes there’s so much it becomes overwhelming, and we don’t know what we really like or why. Over a period of time collect images of things you like and things you don’t, you can save posts, take screenshots or even have pin boards up on walls like I do. Keep revisiting what you’ve saved and remove anything you’ve changed your mind on. Now here’s where you step back. Don’t simply lift someone else’s design and recreate it, nothing worth having comes easy and this is perhaps the hardest part. Your home can be anything YOU want it to be, you won’t find it online or in a magazine because those homes weren’t created for YOU, so consider what makes your home work for you and embrace that.

There you have my ten tips to get started, all of which are great to implement and help you to write your brief before you start working with an architect or designer (if required). If you would like some help to follow my suggestions I would be more than happy to support you transform your home and make it uniquely yours.

If you found this blog helpful I would really love your help in return by sharing it on your social media.

Speak soon,

Charlotte