Are you planning on decorating your home in the near future? If yes, before you dive headfirst into Pinterest for decor inspo, stop!
Decorating isn’t something to be rushed into blindly – there are many questions to ask yourself before decorating. With that in mind, below you’ll find a few factors to consider before you run off to B&Q, Homebase or Wickes for wallpaper, brushes and paint.
What’s your personality?
New build properties have many advantages. For one thing, they can offer a great opportunity to get on the property ladder via shared ownership in London. Another thing in a new build’s favour is that, with new builds being new, they’re freshly decorated.
On the downside, a new build will usually be decorated in neutral shades to appeal to a wider market. There may be the odd feature wall but, on the whole, new builds will have a colour palette of white, grey and beige.
These neutral shades may, of course, be right up your street, especially as grey is fashionable at the moment, thanks to Mrs Hinch and her unhealthy obsession with all things grey.
On the other hand, however, you may absolutely hate grey with the passion of a thousand burning suns and are on a mission to banish all grey from your house and have a yearning to slap yellow paint on everything and forget that grey even exists.
What will you use the room for?
Even if you love yellow to the extent you’d be happy for every wall and ceiling in every room in your home to be yellow, have a think about what the room will be used for.
For example, yellow might look fab in a kitchen, immediately brightening your mood while you’re making your morning coffee, but it’ll be a whole different story in a home office where a more subtle colour that won’t give you a headache after sitting in front of it for 7 hours might be more appropriate.
When it comes to bedrooms, apparently some colours are better for sleep than others. Whether that’s actually scientific fact or just hippy nonsense is up for debate, but you’ll have your own ideas of which colours you find restful and which would give you nightmares.
Will it be easy to change?
You may have fallen in love with that dark, vibrant, pink and green jungle-themed wallpaper but before you get out the wallpaper paste, how easy will it be to get rid of in the future when all that pink and green is getting on your nerves and you’re fed up with tigers watching you eat your dinner?
Wallpaper is a pain to strip at the best of times, and it’s not always easy to paint over, either. Dark colours, whether wallpaper or paint, may take many, many coats of paint until they’re covered properly. Even if you’re not planning on decorating again any time soon, if you’re planning to sell your property, will it put a potential purchaser off?
Wait before you decorate
As you can see, there are a few questions to ask yourself before decorating. It’s tempting to spend hours trawling through ideas on the internet and visualising your home in all the current on-trend colours. But just because a particular colour’s fashionable, that doesn’t mean it will suit your personality, your home or your room’s intended use. So ask yourself a few questions before decorating to prevent making any time-consuming and costly mistakes.
*This is a guest post*
