decorating a room from scratch -- where to start?

[Anonymous]

Anyone anywhere with ANY style tips... PLEASE help me!

I have a lovely great room/sun room in our new house. It has been shut off and unfurnished since we moved in, but I need to furnish/decorate it.

I'm short on time, short on money, and WAY short on decorating knowledge.

Any tips (either on doing-it-myself, or in recommending cheap color/design people?) would be most appreciated.

Where do I start? Do I pick drapes/rug first? Decide on a color palatte? How do I do this??? Pick a sofa first?

I probably don't have the money to do everything all at once (its a large room). How do I put it in usuable shape fastest in a way that won't make it a nightmare to add pieces later?

[Anonymous]

you haven't mentioned whether you like the wall color.. but i think that is the first thing to focus on because a coat of paint makes the most dramatic impact with the least amount of money.

[Anonymous]

I always pick a theme and a few colors to use and go from there!

[Anonymous]

first pick your furniture then drapes and then wall color
finding furniture and drapes that you like is the hardest and most expensive, wall color is easy and cheap...

good luck! sunroom sounds wonderful to have

[Anonymous]

It's nice to have fabric swatches and wood tones set before choosing wall color and window treatments. Designers like to set up a concept board-thing with all of these together.

[Anonymous]

OP here: The wall color is basically white (which I HATE!). The room is an addition with cathedral ceilings (probably 16 feet high at the top), and I'm really struggling with the color. I like color on walls, but I'm scared to death of what to paint this!

[Anonymous]

Not an interior decorator, but it seems to make sense to do the big pieces (that you will own longer) first. For our living room, we picked the coaches and chair first. Now, with the combination of fabric, leather, and wood colors, it is much easier to see what color rug and paint would work best.

[Anonymous]

Pick a wall color first. I would choose something to warm it up - cathedral ceilings definitely reduce the cozy factor. Then pick the next "big" thing, whether a rug or the window treatments or the furniture.

I have used a decorator, and that is how she recommends proceeding.

[Anonymous]

If you're going to put carpeting or some other floor covering down, I'd choose that first. Much easier to pick paint to match the floors than the other way around, in my experience.

[Anonymous]

I agree with PPs who suggested picking a wall color first. I've decorated three houses top to bottom without a decorator, and this is the method I've always used. I'm not particularly artistic or talented at decorating, but I've read loads of decorating magazines (keep a stack of them in the car, the bedroom, all over the house to flip through and tear out photos of things you like). And I've had many, many compliments on my decor, which I attribute to my getting ideas from professionally decorated rooms I've seen in magazines.

Picking a wall color is extremely difficult, especially for a large room. Here's how I do it: I get a whole bunch of those little paint sample strips, I cut them up and tape them to the wall. And then I look at them individually in all kinds of light, and I try to imagine the entire room painted with each color. When I boil it down to one color, I buy a small sample of the paint (or a quart if there are no samples) and I paint part of the wall. Often I have to go lighter with the color, especially in a large room.

Don't be afraid to tinker with the color. My living room is painted a cheerful yellow that looks like a dingy pale mustard in the little paper sample. When the entire room was first painted, it looked great, but too bright, so I had the painter cut the paint 50-50 with white and repaint it, and now it's perfect. I'd used the same color in DC's small bedroom, where it looked wonderful (undiluted with white), but in the larger living room, that much color was too intense.

After wall color, I pick furniture and then fabrics (or both together, depending on the type of furniture). I pick rugs last.

[Anonymous]

Disagree with picking a wall color first. The palette of colors is endless, so you can really pick that last. If you go with wall color first, what happens when you find a sofa with upholstery that doesn't quite work with the wall color?

I always find one thing I love that I decorate a room around. It may be a painting I want to hang, or a piece of fabric that could be used for curtains, upholstery, throw pillows, or a particular architectural element, or a rug, etc. Then I go from there, picking colors, furniture, accessories. I look at lots of magazines and decorating books for inspiration.

[Anonymous]

Go to Calico Corners and use their free decorator service. Find fabric that you like as well as furniture. They'll walk you through everything without having to pay a fee. They even talked to me about paint colors, rugs, etc. I ended up ordering a sofa first -- and picked out fabrics for pillows, chairs, window treatments, etc. They put together a file for me with samples, prices, etc. which I kept on hand when out shopping at other places (to compare prices, etc.). I ended up going back there for chairs and fabric (but had someone else make the pillows). Whatever you decide, start with the big furniture items. Work on fabrics first. Paint will probably be the last thing.

[Anonymous]

Give Wendy at Spruce Design a call-202-498-1311

She will make affordable recommendations. She works on an hourly basis and has presented some great ideas for my much in need family room. I have no sense of style so to have someone come up w/ all of the ideas and come to the house was a big plus for me.

[Anonymous]

Check up on the latest issue of REal Simple....some good decorating tips.

I just finished working with a decorator and this is how we did it.

Picked a picture I LOVED and designed a color scheme around it.

Picked the sofa first. Then side chairs (everything kid safe) Paint. Carpet last.

Took SO much longer than I thought it would...

[Anonymous]

I TOTALLY disagree with the advice to pick a wall color. It is much easier to match a paint color to a rug or furniture than vice versa. I've made that mistake--we could not find a rug to go with our wall color to save our life. Much easier the other way around.

Start with one piece that you love and that works in the room (in terms of size and the style) and pull your inspiration and color palette from there. I always think a rug is a nice place to start, but it can be anything. In general if you are nervous, choose neutral uphostered pieces without a pattern (or with a very subtle one) and pick 2 accent colors to use in smaller pieces. Keep your woods and metals in generally the same tones, and think of adding some texture to some of your things so it isn't all matchy matchy (rattan, bamboo, etc.) It's also nice to have some reflective surfaces (glass, metal etc). Play with furniture arrangments--move things out and try different things until you find something you like. Pull stuff from other rooms in your house to get a sense of the right scale.

One thing people often forget to pay attention to is getting the scale of the furniture right. Giant furniture in tiny rooms is bad, but tiny furniture in tiny rooms is also bad. Measure and then go home and tape the floor to see how big things will be.

Most of all, don't worry that it has to be perfect. Take the plunge--if you love it you will always find a place for it. And a splash of yellow or red in a room never hurts!