Steps to Designing a Room

Planning makes design easy.

An empty room is a lot like a blank wall. You may have dozens of clever ideas for filling it, but aren't quite sure how to approach those ideas. The trick to designing a room you are happy with lies in planning and prioritizing.

Function

Decide what you want the function of the room to be. Determine whether its going to be a study, sleeping space, gathering room for friends or media room. Having a clear picture of the function of the room helps you plan what you're going to bring into the space. Once you've settled upon the function, think about how you want the room to make you feel. For instance, knowing in advance that you want a cozy space as opposed to a formal room helps you determine the items you need in the room.

Prioritizing

Make a list of what you absolutely need in the space. If it's a dining room that you're designing, you know that you need a table, some type of seating and, possibly, window treatments. This is your "must-have" list. Create another list that consists of your "wants" for the room. This may include an area rug, centerpiece, buffet and artwork. You can live without these items if you need to. Layer your "wants" into the room in order of priority. For example, if you need a buffet to store your formal dinnerware, bring it in first. The reason layering works is because it's easy to bring too many items into a room, making it look cluttered. If you're introducing items in order of importance, you can easily stop before the room looks overdone.

60-30-10 Rule

The 60-30-10 design rule says that, in order for a room to have a balanced color palette, 60 percent of the space should consist of one shade, 30 percent more should be a color that coordinates with that first shade and the final 10 percent should be an accent color. For instance, medium brown walls would account for approximately 60 percent of the color found in a dining room. Thirty percent of the color might be a deep blue found in the chair cushions, table runner, draperies and area rug. An eggshell white could make up the final 10 percent of color in the room, found in accents like vases, dinnerware, a flower arrangement and artwork. Spreading the color out through the 60-30-10 formula helps make a space feel cohesive and well designed.

Focal Point

Choose a focal point for whatever room you're designing. That focal point may be a fireplace in the living room, picture window in a bedroom or spa tub in a bath. The focal point in a room is the one thing around which everything else in the space rotates. In the case of a fireplace, you would create a seating area in which all guests in the room can visit with one another while viewing the focal point. This may mean placing a sofa on a right angle toward the fireplace with two chairs directly facing the fireplace. It may mean arranging the bed so that it faces the picture window, making the view outside the first thing you see each morning. An array of candles and bath salts in decorative glass decanters around a spa tub can help make it a focal point in that room. The aim is for anyone who enters a space to get a sense that you knew exactly what the best features were in the room when you designed it.

References

• What's Best Next: How To Design And Then Arrange A Room
• The Untrained Housewife: Seven Steps to Easily Designing the Perfect Room