On the surface, decorating your home can seem simple. Pick out some decor you love, place, or hang and put everything together and voila! Right?
Well not exactly, there’s a bit more that goes into it than that if you really want to create that beautiful space you’ve been dreaming of and this post will walk you through everything you need to do!
Even if you don’t think you don’t want to do an entire room makeover, learn how to do it one piece at a time without getting overwhelmed.
Before doing anything, you always want to make sure you have a plan. Having a solid plan, whether we’re talking about designing or not, is key to making life go smoother.
So, what exactly do you need to plan out how to redesign your home?
Before we jump into that, I recommend grabbing my free decor planner and budget tracker!
This is what I use, and we will be talking about this more in this post!
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The Easiest Way To Learn How To Decorate – Get Inspiration
Before I do anything, I always look for inspiration. I get a rough idea of what I want. I like to do this before I even start planning so I can create a vision in my head for my own space.
There are tons of places to look for inspiration. Of course, Pinterest is my go-to.
But, I also like to begin looking at my favorite home decor stores online to really get the creative ball rolling. This can also help you learn how to decorate your home by showing you so many different ways others are doing it!
When finding inspiration I like to create a Pinterest board and add everything I find that I like.
Get on your favorite home decor store’s website, don’t overthink where to look. I may be a designer but that doesn’t mean I don’t shop amazon and Walmart for a good deal sometimes!
Read: 50 Home Decor Stores You Should Be Shopping At
Rough Draft
After getting some good inspiration I like to roughly draft out what I want the room to look like. You don’t need to be an artist to do this!
Don’t worry, you’re going to be the only one who has to see it if you choose to put it on paper.
You could simply stand in your room and try to visualize everything you want in the space and create a list of items. You can go a step further and roughly draw different areas in the space to get a feel for the overall design.
Optional: Mood Board or Render
Learning how to decorate and create your dream home doesn’t have to be a challenge.
With the rough draft in hand and inspiration nearby, you can really start to bring this idea to life.
Don’t worry about making a mood board it is actually super simple, and you don’t necessarily have to make a render, but I’ll tell you why it helps.
I had a dozen ideas bouncing around in my head. About what kind of TV stand we wanted, how I wanted to decorate above the couch and add in storage for B’s toys.
When I started playing around with a mood board, it helped me visualize what each piece looked like together and helped me narrow down my ideas.
You can imagine something in your head all day, but once it’s in front of you it’s completely different. Don’t wait until you purchase all the pieces to see them together.
I personally prefer to do the render to visualize the entire space, not just the pieces. It puts you right in the room, you can get a sense of how each piece works with your paint and flooring and the overall feel of the room more than a mood board.
You can go try out Design Files for a free trial to complete a more advanced, yet beginner-friendly render.
You can copy and paste pictures into a google doc for a quick and easy mood board.
With the picture or list in hand, now you can start shopping! Check out all your favorite home stores to bring together your dream space.
Creating the Plan
It’s a great idea to use a budget decor tracker when designing your space. Now that you know all the pieces you need, you can come up with your overall budget and set a limit for each piece.
With the planner, I set my budget, and then write out the most important pieces I would need for this space. Below is a space for items that are wanted, but less of a priority at this time.
This allows you to come back for these items once you have that bit of extra to dish out in this area of your overall monthly budget down the road in case they don’t fit into the budget.
You can buy everything at once or spread it out, whichever works best for you at the time! Having a plan and budget tracker gives you complete control.
Related: Read Common House Plants To Improve Your Home
Don’t forget to grab your decor planner! Plus sign up for the email list to gain access to the entire resource library!
Wow, I love this! This is a super practical approach to re-designing a home, even if someone’s a complete beginner! Great insight, and I can’t wait to see the “after” pictures of the room you’ve been working on!
The transofromation is crazy! The first few days I walked into the living room I was surpised again lol! Just a few more finising touches and I will make the big reveal (:
My husband and I were just talking about redoing the bedroom. Having a plan around it like this would be great!
Having a solid plan is a great way to avoid stress and stick to a budget, however big or small. Glad this helped!
These are some great tips, but perhaps trying to achieve “perfection” is too much? I like a little bit of imperfection in my interior design, I think it adds character. But maybe that’s just me. 🙂
Perfection is different to everyone in interior design, there is no way to achieve a “perfect” design if everyone has a different design taste. But, that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to create a space they want, which is why the point of this post is to help everyone achieve their own idea of interior perfection!
I love a rustic farmhouse design, which can look old and outdated to those who like a very clean modern design. If you like a more variraty and what some may sau incoheisve design you can still create a perfect ecelectic design to your own taste. All in the eye of the beholder, but this walks you through all the same steps to get to the end 😊
We actually just moved into a new home and are busy trying to decorate it. We got rid of a lot of our old furniture and bought new, so this is truly a complete makeover from our last home.
True. Have a plan. It is okay to change it in the process but it will help if you do. Its harder when you’ll do it on the spot.
Yes! I am constantly changing the plan both for myself, the oringial plans for my home look so much differenthan how it looks now (:
Fantastic tips! I am planning on redoing my office soon and I keep putting it off because I feel overwhelmed.
It can be a huge undertaking, I understand why you would be overhwlemed! I hope this helps you take some of that stress away and finally conquer it!
These are some great tips! Thanks for the info!
This can be so overwhelming task. Thanks for the tips x
These all are great tips! I use Pinterest as my own little mood board!
Pinterest is the best for finding inspiration!
I am a out to redecorate my master bedroom. I know what I want but can’t seem to find my vision online. I need to start looking in stores.
Many people don’t think to do this when trying to decorate but I love going out and looking in actual stores or their websites for inspiration!
Thanks for the great tips for interior decorating. There are some of us that aren’t that strong in creativity so these sources are helpful.
I’m so glad you found it helpful!
The mood board is so cool! And the printables could be really helpful for all who want a good tip to decorate their home.
I follow along with this exact printable for both myslef and clients! It’s such a simple way to keep track of everything without it being overwhelming (:
Nice tips, its practical and less expensive. I will definitely follow these tips when we are going to redecorate our bedroom, thanks for sharing!
Glad you found it helpful! I’d love to see the bedroom when it’s done (:
It sounds like its such a solid way to plan out a room. Rather than just a Tetris idea of mismatched parts you begin with an idea and plan for what the room looks like and flesh out the idea before actually moving anything into place.
It takes so much stress away and the end result is so much more coheisve, many tend to overlook the planning stage without realizing the benefits.
Thanks for sharing these cool tips! These are really helpful since we are planning to redecorate our bedroom as well.
Glad you fonud this helpful! I’d love to see the bedroom once it is finished! Send a pic or tag me (:
This is a great article. Definitely gonna use this when we set up our new house. I like the idea of the budget tracker.
Thank you! I’m glad you found value in it (: The budget tracker is the most simple way to take stress out of decorating when you can see in front of you exactly where every bit of money is going and where you should try to cut back or splurge!
These are amazing tips especially that we just bought a house and will be decorating the living room, thank you so so much.
Those are some great points to remember in decorating the perfect room. I’ll keep this in mind for when we redecorate a room in our home.
These are great tips! We just finished our basement and need a design plan so I’ll definitely have to try this.
omg i needed to see this post cause i’m going to be moving in my new apartment thanks for sharing this
Wow, you really know a lot about room decorations. I wanted to try this but it’s just a little too risky because I have no idea what to do. This is definitely a good starter.
Nice blog..I actually do the same thing when it comes to Pinterest. I have so many things done through Pinterest ideas. 😘
Great tips. I am more of a one-piece at a time type of person. Whenever I find a piece I like, I just add it in. I do love Pinterest for ideas, I have private boards where I add inspirations.
This reminds me of when we were redoing the boys’ rooms. We needed to plan in advance and pick out the color scheme. Fun, but a lot of work goes into decorating a room.
Great ideas for beginners, I have never done a mood board; guess now is a good time to do one. Once you get inspired and take it one step at a time you will be ok.
Omg I wish I had read this before I started to decorate my home! It would have saved me so much grief and returned items!!
What interesting tips … I’ll definitely have to keep it all in mind if and when I redecorate. =0)
I’ll be honest that my wife is in charge of the decorating around our place, but maybe I can put this to good use and maybe pitch in a few ideas as well! Thanks!
Amazing tips and I love the transformation it’s really beautiful.
I agree, that planning and buying the right products are so much helpful in decorating your place.
It always works like that to me, I have a vision, buy the stuff and it never looks the way I imagine. I love the idea of the google doc vision board.
Beautiful ideas and tips here…you’ve made this sound really easy and I’m thankful for that. My husband and I have two very different styles, so it’s always a balance for us to come up with a design plan. I like “things” and accessories and he doesn’t so I keep it low key to appease him. I swap out items during various seasons to make things look “new” again.
Great advise! I didn’t know that if you’re buying online, a lot of stores offer a percentage off your first order. It’s good to know that Amazon even offers $50 off your first order with their credit card!
That Decor Planner looks really useful! I might have to use it when I redecorate my apartment!
“Pick out some decor you love, place or hang and put everything together and voila!” This is so me hahaha. I never thought of a decor planner before and this is perfect!
Creating a mood board is so important to get everything matching and the way you want it!
I love the idea of creating a mood board. After my drafts, I always go straight to rendering. Now I’ve got one more step to easen the work. I also love interior decoration and when it comes to buying the products, I’m glad because I buy them all at an interior decor mall over here. Shopping made easier!
I absolutely love creating mood boards to help me decorate. It makes things so much easier when it comes to deciding on the type of vibe I want a room to have.
It took me time reading this as while reading your post i was visualizing how to update my living room based on your tips and i got lost in my thoughts lol. I love this post and saved this post and rereading this again.
Really helpful tips on how to approach room decoration. Definitely learnt a lot!
Great tips for planning a room redecoration. I struggle with this so much, I wish someone could just come in and do it for me.
You made is alot easier to decide to design my room.. I always over think and end up confused.. Thank you for this.m