You’ve signed on the dotted line, the keys are making impressions in the clutches of your hand and the nightmarish home moving preparations are over. Now, however, comes the time for making your new home into everything your old one wasn’t. But here’s the thing with decorating a house, where to start?
Before you start moving boxes to specific rooms and lugging gigantic pieces of furniture from one corner to another, it’s wise to consider the processin which you’re going to decorate your new abode. Once you’ve decided on the roomyou’re going to tackle first, it’s time to start approaching the task of redecorating in an orderly fashion.
Which room should I decorate first?
Knowing where to begin with a new home decoration can be a little overwhelming. Of course this is a situation where your personal preference will help you come to the final conclusion, but for the sake of helping you to finally get the paintbrushes out, we recommend beginning with high traffic areas. Generally this would be the living room, or any other room where you both entertain guests and spend a lot of down time. You can then use less commonly used rooms as storage spaces for the living room furniture. Once you’ve decided on the room you’re going to work with stick with it! It’s best to finish one task before you move onto another.
Should you paint walls or skirting first?
Before we answer that, save yourself the trouble of installing furniture only to move it back after you’ve decorated and paint first. Prepare your surfaces by making sure all surfaces are free of dents or irregularities. As for the question, if you’re painting the entirety of a room, start from the top and work your way down. Begin at the ceiling, painting down by about an inch onto the walls to give yourself a neat edge. Once you paint or wallpaper the walls you can cover this line but it’s important to give yourself a bit of space to work with. You can use the same trick as you work your way down to the floor by painting onto the skirting board, provided you plan to repaint these, too.
Should you pick carpet or paint first?
As mentioned above with any new home decoration, paint first! Mixing up the orders of these steps might mean you shell out on a new carpet or expensive wood finish only to accidentally drip paint all over it. Your flooring can also have a big effect on the appearance of the colour on your walls so it’s wisest to buy this after you’ve decided on paint. If you plan on installing new doors make sure you do this after the flooring, so that you don’t have to waste time getting your new doors re-planed.
Give your furniture a new home
There’s a good chance you already own furniture which you want to integrate into your new home rather than completely replacing. Once you’ve packed away the paintbrushes and hammer and nails the next step is to decide on furniture placement. You should alsostart buying any new pieces the space may need. When it comes to fittingfurniture certain larger pieces, such as sofas, beds, wardrobes and drawers, should be assembled first so that smaller pieces can be fitted around these harder to move items.
Sofas and beds should ideally face the focal point in the room. Before you begin dragging pieces of furniture around, however, try sketching out an idea of how you’d like the room to look. Note where the aerial for the television is to help you best decide on where your sofa will have to face, and where sockets may be to position lighting.
Add the finishing touches
Once you’ve finalised the placement of your belongings, from the smallest side table to the kitchen bin, you can begin to really add personality to your new home decor. Consider the sizes of the rooms in your home and match accessories that make the most of the space. The largerthe roomthe larger an accessory you can get away with. This also works in the same way for high ceilings and tall accessories.
However once you’ve painted, installed flooring and added furniture, the steps you take towards adding the final touches in your new home decor is up to you. Just make sure to paint before all else!
Do you have some redecorating to do but don’t know what task to tacklefirst in your new home? Let us know in the comments below!
