Decorating your home is exciting, but it can be equally overwhelming at times. You start looking at paint colors, save a few sofas you like and before you know it you’ve got completely different ideas for what the room could look like.
The problem is that making each decision separately can leave you with a room that doesn’t quite work once everything is together. That sofa you liked might be too big for where you wanted to put it, the new wall color looks completely different once the lamps are on and you’ve added more furniture but somehow still don’t have anywhere to store anything.
Before you start buying things, there are a few details worth working out first. So interior designers at Arcadium 3D Room Planner have compiled a list of 7 things worth considering before redecorating your home in 2027
- The Paint Color
It’s tempting to start with paint because changing the walls can make the biggest difference straight away. But picking a color from a small card in a store and covering the whole room with it are two very different things.
Say you choose a gray that looks quite warm on the sample, but your room gets a lot of cooler natural light. Once it’s on every wall it might look much bluer than you expected. The same color can also look different in the morning compared to later in the evening when you have the lamps on.
Get a sample and put some on the actual wall before deciding. Look at it at different times of the day and next to the flooring and furniture that will be staying in the room. It’s much easier to change your mind when you’ve only painted a small patch.
- Where the Furniture Is Going
Maybe the sofa has always been against one wall simply because that’s where you put it when you moved in. Moving it somewhere else could give you more room for another chair or make better use of a part of the room that normally sits empty.
If you’re buying new furniture, measurements become even more important. A sofa fitting along a wall doesn’t necessarily mean it will fit comfortably once the coffee table and everything else is added around it.
- The Lighting
Lighting tends to be something you notice once everything else is finished. You paint the room, move the furniture and then realize the corner where you’ve put the chair is quite dark in the evening.
You have to think about where you actually need the light. If you normally sit in one particular chair to read, having a lamp nearby makes more sense than relying on the main ceiling light. The same goes for a desk or a dining table if the room is being used for more than one thing.
It’s worth thinking about the lighting while you’re deciding on the layout rather than trying to find somewhere for another lamp once everything else is finished.
- Where Everything Is Going to Be Stored
Buying a new cabinet because you like how it looks is one thing, but it helps if you know what you’re actually planning to put inside it.
Storage can take up quite a lot of room and adding it afterwards sometimes means squeezing another piece of furniture into a space that already felt finished.
Look at what is currently sitting out because it doesn’t have a proper home. If you have books, kids’ toys or other things that usually end up around the room, plan somewhere for them before choosing the furniture. You might find one larger storage unit makes more sense than adding smaller pieces around the room later.
- How You’ll Walk Through the Room
You might already have an idea in mind of how a room should look, but then when you finish furnishing you may encounter some problems with how your room layout flows. For example you might have the perfect spot in your head for where your armchair will live, but when you actually put it there you find that you’re constantly bumping your leg into it when you’re walking through to the kitchen. The same problem can happen when you move a large coffee table into the centre of the room – you still need to walk around comfortably without constantly squeezing past pieces of furniture, even if those pieces do look lovely.
Before settling on the layout and buying furniture, it’s a good idea to walk through the room as you normally would and pay attention to the routes you use most. If something is already in the way when you’re planning it, it probably isn’t going to become less annoying once you’ve finished decorating.
- What the Main Focal Point Will Be
Not every room needs a dramatic feature wall or a huge fireplace, but it usually helps to know what you want people to notice first.
In some living rooms the TV naturally becomes the focal point. In others it might be a fireplace, a large window or even a piece of artwork. The problem starts when several things are competing for attention.
You might paint one wall a completely different color, then put the TV on another and add a large piece of artwork somewhere else. Individually they all work, but together there’s quite a lot going on.
Work out what you want the main focus of the room to be and let the rest of the design work around it rather than trying to make every wall interesting.
- Try the Whole Room Before You Commit
You don’t have to know exactly what the finished room will look like before you start, but it can help to put some of these decisions together before you spend the money.
Try the sofa in another position. See what happens if the walls are a different color. Check whether there’s actually enough space around that larger coffee table once everything else is in the room.
This is where the Arcadium 3D room designer can be useful. You can build the room to the right dimensions, add furniture and try different colors, materials and layouts before changing anything in the actual room. You can then move through it in 3D and see whether the furniture feels too close together or something that looked fine from above doesn’t work quite as well once you’re standing in the space.
Redecorating will always involve changing your mind somewhere along the way. It’s just a lot easier to do that before the paint has dried and the new sofa is already sitting in your living room.
