My top 10 Home design tips for functionality and beauty for years to come!

Deciding on your floors, your trim, your paint colors and your finishes can be very daunting! These are my top ten home design tips to help you along the way. I concluded the renovation of my Grandparents’ 100 year old farm house over two years ago and I really spent a lot of time agonizing over my paint choices etc. I learned a lot along the way on how to not only make a home last in functionality but also how to make a home I could love for years to come. All of my tips are based on a place that will be your forever home.

Design Tips #1. Design your home around what will stay the same. Don’t be those idiots on house hunters that won’t buy a home because a spiral staircase is too dangerous for their two year old: kids grow up. The only people this house needs to accommodate is you and your partner (or maybe just you) because, in the end, you’re going to be here for many, many, many years and you are the only people that need to love this home and whom this home needs to work for. (If your teenage daughter complains you can tell her that this is your dream home: not her’s.)

Design Tips #2. Functionality is key. Now that I’ve mentioned that this is your dream home (and not your teenage daughter’s) maybe you should wait until your kids move out before spending $5,000 on your dream marble counter tops? If you know your ten year old is probably going to play soccer in your living room, maybe buy that crystal lamp after he heads off to college?

Design Tips #3. Design starts from the bottom and works its way up. You want to start with the thing that is hardest to change once you choose it: your floors and your trim. I chose wood floors and white trim because I love dark wood but still wanted my house to be light and airy feeling. Just take note here, the choice you make on your floors and your trim will dictate all of your paint colors throughout the house.

Design Tips #4. Be consistent. Yes, there are a lot of homes out there that have different floorings and different doors and different paint colors and different color trim in every room but a home that is consistent throughout makes a lot more sense to the eye, stick with what you love. Love dark stained trim? Do it everywhere. Love purple carpet? Do it everywhere. Prefer bronze hardware? Use them on every door handle and every cabinet knob and every light fixture – if you’re consistent it will look deliberate and deliberate is key. But, most importantly, you need to LOVE it first and foremost.

Design Tips #5. Painting furniture is far less difficult than painting an entire room. It is MUCH harder to paint over an entire wall then to repaint an end table! Not to mention accessories, pillows, paintings, pictures, window treatments etc. can all give you whatever color room you want!

Design Tips #6. Choosing door paint. Some of you may have 100 year old solid wood stained doors that you wouldn’t paint even if your life depended on it. However, a lot of folks have just basic hollow core doors that have been that color since they were purchased. Your doors are an opportunity to use any paint color you want. Be a rebel, be daring, doors are like furniture they can always be painted a different color, your teenage daughter wanted a pink room? How about a bright pink door instead? And you could always just paint HER side of the door pink! (Closet doors too!)

Design Tips #7. Choosing ceiling colors. There’s been a lot of talk about ceilings being the fifth wall of a room that I completely agree with. No I don’t think you need to keep your ceilings light colored nor am I against just painting them white. In my home you’ll notice that I did, in fact, paint all of my ceilings the same white as my trim – this was a choice. Because my ceilings were bead board they felt more like a structural “trim-like” element as opposed to a fifth wall so it was only natural to paint them the same color as the trim. Ceilings get dirty over time, if your house is more then a few years old the ceilings probably could really use a fresh paint job (especially if they’re textured) it will make a huge difference in how clean and bright the room feels. (Yes you can paint textured ceilings it just requires a really thick roller completely loaded with paint. Or, there are ways of covering up textured ceilings that can also be painted.)

Design Tips #8. Choosing your fixture finishes. Now here’s one that gets a lot of people really befuddled. If budget is not a problem then there are, at least, six main finishes to choose from and variations therein: Chrome, Nickel, White, Glass, Gold, Brass and Bronze. Nickel, bronze and glass/crystal are a lot pricier then chrome, gold or white and glass/crystal is not really a finish as you can’t get everything in it but I included it here because you most certainly can get your hardware and light fixtures in it. Solid brass is coming back in a big way right now but it is very expensive.
Gold, chrome and white are the most cost effective and white tends to be even a little cheaper then chrome and gold. (Note: no, you can’t just get everything in “white” either, when I say white I mean really inexpensive: like things made of plastic.) I don’t know about you but I am totally over the fake gold hardware craze of the ’80s and ’90s. Chrome is what I went with throughout my home because it was affordable and I like shiny things. There is some glass and crystal sprinkled throughout my house as well but always on a base of chrome. All I can say about finishes is that once you pick one stick with it throughout your house. (Got all gold hardware throughout and hate it? You can paint it!)

Design Tips #9. Choosing your paint colors. Now that you have your floors, trim colors and fixture finishes chosen you now have a good base for choosing your paint. Most floors (tiles, woods, carpets) are in the brown range, it hides dirt better so they’re more common. My floors are old hardwood stained the color of black dirt so I didn’t want any hint of brown on my walls, my trim or my ceilings for fear of my whole house becoming different shades of poo. That being said, a lot of people like the “warmer” or “earthier” colors and that is a far cry then the color of poo.

(No, darker colors do not necessarily make a room feel smaller but the wrong dark will make a room feel BLUE! or RED! or, even worse, PEPTO BISMAL!)

Your walls should not make you start thinking of your office as the “Cotton Candy Room” or your kitchen as the “Jungle Frog” room. In my case I was well narrowed down in color choices before I even began because anything in a brown hue was a no (which is half the color wheel). I had a ton of white trim, any choice I made was either going to set the trim off or make it disappear at the glare of the paint color. And that’s really the best place to start with your paint color choices: what features do you want people to look at first? Is it the paint color/your walls? Is it the trim? Is it the floors? Is it an architectural element?

Design Tips #10. Check it out before you buy. This is probably a bit of an obvious one but, if you’re anything like me, it is something you need to remind yourself of often. I’m the type that would go to the store, take my time, really stress about it, pick out a paint color, buy as many gallons as I need and bring it home without ever considering that I can get a sample and check it out first. People, don’t be like me: get a sample first. What happens is that when you buy that much paint (and can’t return it) is that you suck it up and use it even if its not right and it will bother you forever. Paint colors already dry darker then the swatch and every different time of day in a room will change the way the paint color looks. Paint can always be changed but let’s aim for not making that mistake to begin with.

Whatever your design choices may be there really is only one tip I would give. Ignore everyone else. Put Pinterest away. Close your browser window. Go to the store/salvage yard and find what you’re looking for! You’ll know it when you see it because your heart will sing. Do nothing if you do not absolutely love it first and foremost – this is your dream home.