A space that tells your story, full of design that you love and stuff that means something to you is the whole point of bringing an Interior Design together. That after all is what makes it your home. I am often encouraging people to be bold and have as much fun as they like. What Makes Great Interior Design! Just like ceilings, floors are often left as an afterthought in decorating schemes but a statement floor can create striking results that will add wow-factor to the room.
The key is to incorporate balance, for instance, if the floor is busy pattern make sure the rest of the room is pared back and neutral. Look for furniture pieces with a small footprint and lift what you can off the floor. The colour wheel is an interior design essential.
Use it to help you come up with complementary schemes using colours from opposite sides of the wheel , analogous schemes using colours next to each other on the wheel or bolder schemes such as split complementary or triadic, which use three colours.
The golden ratio is a proportion often seen in nature and has served artists well for centuries. Interior designers can put it to good use too and create schemes that feel effortlessly harmonious. It works by dividing spaces into approximately two-thirds for one section and one third for the remainder.
In this scheme by Sara Tramp featured on designer Emily Henderson's website , the bed and bedside table take up roughly two-thirds of the arrangement, while the shelving unit takes up around a third, creating a sense of balance without feeling too formal. Repeating shapes throughout a scheme is a subtle way to help the human brain read a space as a harmonious whole. Here, for example, a selection of rectangles — in the pictures, sofa and scatter cushions — echo one another, as do the pair of round mirrors, round coffee table and vase.
Good lighting is often the last thing most people think about when coming up with a new design scheme, but it really should be the first. You need to carefully plan where every single light, switch and socket will go before turning to decorating, making sure you include a good mix of overhead lighting, task lighting, mood lighting and accent lighting.
Using the right colour and brightness of light bulb for the right tasks will also help your room look and perform its best. The instinctive answer might be to paint it bright white to reflect as much light as possible.
But this can give a dingy room an off-putting, grey-ish tone that feels needlessly gloomy. Instead, embrace the dark side and paint your walls in deep, rich hues to create an irresistibly cosy scheme that draws you in. Lighten the mood with a few bright accents and make sure you include plenty of layered lighting. Take photos and use them to help you create a concept board to inform your design. This coastal-themed room draws on the beach, from the lobster-pot light fitting to the whitewashed wood walls.
Planning an alfresco dining room for outdoor entertaining? Treat your exterior space as you would a living room scheme and factor in rugs, lighting, comfortable seating and areas to pop drinks. Paint fences in sunny colours, display artwork you can buy prints specifically for outdoors, to survive the elements and hanging plants.
Lastly, use an outdoor rug to ground the scheme. Don't feel you have to line your furniture up along the walls If you have a big living room, bringing sofas and armchairs into the centre of the space will create a cosy and much more sociable seating space. This works particularly well in open-plan spaces and you can always place a console at the back of your seating so you're not looking at a big expanse of sofa. If your room is too small for a central sofa, keep it against the wall and arrange a few armchairs at angles facing towards the sofa to get the designer look.
You can fake it to some extent by clustering smaller pictures into a gallery wall, but nothing compares to an oversized artwork that grabs your attention the moment you step into a room, as this scheme by Rob Mills Architects shows. Double up and place two complementary pieces next to instead of over a fireplace for maximum impact. If oversized art is outside of your budget, trying offsetting a smaller piece above a sideboard or sofa — hanging it centrally will make it look lost.
Think outside the box and carry your painted effect around corners and onto door frames for added interest. If there's something you love, whether it's a piece of furniture, an artwork or collection, think about how best to work your scheme around it. It's pieces like these that create an individual and cherished interior. A staple in the interior design repertoire, the gallery wall is an exercise in creativity and balance — but not even the experts get it right the first time.
To achieve that Instagram-worthy display, map out your design beforehand. Cut out cardboard templates of each frame you want to hang and arrange them across the wall with Blu Tac until you find a combination that works, then simply swap for the real thing! Rugs are the ultimate way to draw an interior design scheme together, but go too small and the rug will look lost and your scheme will fall flat.
Consider using them in different ways, too — whether it's a few rugs overlapping each other or even hung in place of wallhangings. Entrance looking a little lacklustre? Interior designers know that even the most hardworking hallway decor needn't scrimp on style. Want to make a narrow hallway or staircase look wider?
Rather than covering it all in carpet, fit a runner leaving about 8cm of bare floor on either side. The runner divides up the space, drawing the eye into the distance and tricking it into thinking the area is wider than it is. Consider buying paints made from natural materials that contain no or very low quantities of harmful volatile organic compounds VOCs. Boring old white with perhaps a bit of colour on the cornicing is usually about as exciting as it gets.
But creating a statement ceiling by painting, papering or even adding a mural as designer Crystal Sinclair has done here can give a room an instant lift. Painting a ceiling in a dark colour can make a space feel warm and cosy, while metallic paints or faux tin tiles give it a more Art Deco look.
Trying to design a successful open-plan living space? When you're working with a blank canvas, it can be difficult to decide where to start. Rather than getting bogged down with accessories in your living room, start with the sofa. Usually the largest piece of furniture in the room, it's easiest to plan your layout around this key feature.
When it comes to positioning, consider the light, thoroughfares and any views you might want to utilise. This also works for other rooms, whether it's the bed in a bedroom or a dining table in an entertaining area. Mood lighting can instantly create the right atmosphere. Dimmer switches give you the power to use the same bulb as either general lighting or mood lighting, so installing them in every room will instantly boost the versatility of your lighting scheme.
Lamps are ideal for creating a cosy glow at night, and candles, lanterns and wall lights will all help add to your room's overall ambience. Also, try using LED-strip lights to highlight an alcove or under shelving to highlight your favourite features.
An affordable way to create a piece of oversized art like this colourful number by Touch Interiors is to frame a striking wallpaper or piece of fabric. You can save even more money by searching for off-cuts online, or combining different samples to give a patchwork effect. Curtains can make or break a room. Opt for a luxurious fabric, such as velvet, to create an opulent frame for your windows.
One of the most common curtain mistakes is to hang them just above the top of the window frame, making the window — and the room — feel squat. Hang them high to create a grand impression and make the room feel taller. Not many of us would claim to look our best in the morning, but you can give yourself a head start by getting your bathroom lighting right.
Never hang a bathroom sconce above the mirror — it will only make you look washed out. Instead, install sconces on either side of the mirror as they'll light your face evenly and frame you in your most flattering light.
Placing downlighters around the sides of the room, rather than the middle, will also help to avoid shadows. Looking for wallpaper ideas to give instant wow-factor? Try using it in unexpected places to line cupboards, drawers and shelving as Liz Engelsen has done here. This is a subtler, cheaper way to introduce a statement pattern into your scheme than papering a whole wall. Again, keep an eye out for money-saving off-cuts if you don't need to use a whole roll.
Kitchens are an excellent case in point. For example, if you have basic IKEA kitchen units that are in a good condition, you can give them a fresh look by fitting them with new doors and hardware from kitchen upgrade companies such as Superfront, Reform and Plykea at considerably less cost than buying new units. One of the most common questions interior designers are asked is how high to hang pendant lighting. The answer depends, to some extent, on the size and style of your light, the height of your ceilings and the height of the people living in your home, but here are some useful guidelines: in a living room or hallway, hang your light about 2.
If you're hanging them above an island for statement kitchen lighting , leave about 80cm between the countertop and the bottom of the light shade. The door frame in this picture has been painted in the same pale pink as the wall in the room beyond, tying the two spaces together. When it comes to interior design perfection, your work is never done. While your wall colours, furniture and floor coverings might remain the same for years, there are plenty of ways to give your interior spaces a freshen up, without having to redecorate.
Update your door handles, upcycle a piece of furniture , change up rugs and cushions, alternate the images in your gallery wall or try out some new lighting to enhance your favourite spaces with minimal effort. When you're planning the furniture for a room, it can be easy to over order or underestimate the space you actually have to hand.
Yet space planning is key to good interior design. It's about family and friends, it's the backdrop to your life. We used to drive down to France every summer when we were kids and my Mum would stop off in Limoges, which is famous for porcelain.
She would always insist on buying seconds from the factory shop. They were all wobbly and bent because they had been misfired, but to me they were beautiful and filled with character. That was a big part of what inspired me to create the Portmeirion collection.
If things are too perfect then it is without character, it's not good to be too precious about something. The more you strive for perfection, the more it disappears.
Don't aim for perfection, try to create a relaxed environment, that's what I think is important. I get my inspiration from all over the place; books, magazines, the internet, shops and my relatives of course! It is like being in a family of doctors sometimes, we spend a lot of time together and are inspired by similar things so we do talk about our work with each other.
Our enthusiasm can be slightly contagious I think, and it sometimes feels like design has sort of become part of our DNA, but everyone in the family has been incredibly supportive of me and encouraging and it's lovely. Thinking about how a room is going to make you feel is essential. That is what good interior design does. It's about creating an atmosphere. You absolutely have to know something about the people you are designing a space for. You need to find out about the way they lead their life, which rooms they use the most and you must always consider form and function.
When it comes to making decisions about colour, my advice is to do it slowly. Try colours on a small area of the walls you want to paint and look at them at different times of day.
It's about instinct and how it makes you feel again. Always try things before you make any final decisions. Lighting is also essential because it's all to do with mood. I like to have lots of different light sources, low level lighting as well as ceiling lights and I like to have quite a lot of control over them as well, with lots of different switches and dimmers.
The functionality and the atmosphere are the most important things to get right. The fabrics, the floor coverings, the furniture the lighting are the tools that you use to create that. Don't make rushed decisions if you can help it, apply a process of elimination approach if you can.
The more you do it, the more confident you will become in your decision making. You've got to be able to empathise with your client. Being an interior designer can mean lots of things, there's a little bit of being a nanny in there, a little bit of psychology and lots of empathy.
When you have designed a space or an object or anything really and the client loves it, that is why I do what I do. That is the best feeling and the best thing about the job. If you create something and you put it out there and you know that somebody else is genuinely thrilled with it, then that is your reward and there is no better feeling!
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