Whether you are redecorating your own home or designing the interiors for a multi-million dollar development, there are 10 Golden Rules of Interior Design that should always be obeyed. Ignore them at your peril! According to yours truly, they are as follows:

Write a clear and detailed brief. Know exactly what you are trying to achieve, who it is meant to appeal to, what the mood and style direction should be and what the functionality needs to be, amongst many other things. Only once you have a clearly defined brief should the design process begin. This is why ‘pitching’ to win a project is such nonsense. Designers, who ‘pitch’, do so flying completely blind without a detailed brief. I also take exception at designers giving away free intellectual property. Designers should be generously remunerated for their creative IP, but I digress. Even people designing their own home interiors or doing a touch of decoration should create a brief and share it with the other decision makers in their house. Set a budget and a timeframe and figure out how you or someone else is going to manage this project - Do you need a project manager? A design & construct consultant? Think about it now! It could save you whatever your version of squillions is.

Get accurate and up-to-date floor plans that are to scale.  If you don’t know what to scale means, you shouldn’t be designing the interiors. If there is an architectural plan in existence, that is all the better. If not, get out that measuring device [tape, laser or other] and start measuring accurately and to scale. If you are aren’t experienced in creating scaled floor plans, then get someone who is. Without an accurate scaled floor plan [and elevations too], you are going nowhere fast. Use your scaled floor plans for furniture selection and placement. For example, you don’t want to end up with a sofa that is far too big for the room for which it is intended. 

Set a clear ‘style’ and ‘mood’ direction. This is the high level creative, visioning part of the project where you and whoever else is involved in the project put a stake in the ground and make a firm decision to head in a particular design direction.  Is it minimalist, contemporary, Classic contemporary, Traditional, Tropical resort, On trend? If you can’t define the style, you’ll never be able to create one. Even if you decide to ‘make up’ your very own style, you’ll still need to be able to articulate it both visually and verbally. Every decision from this point forward is determined by this style vision. If you’re hazy, your design will look lazy, so be crystal clear on this one! Remember, form follows function.  Not only does your design have to look beautiful, but it also must be functional.

Identify your ‘starting points’. This is what I call them anyway. They’re the things that you can see inside the space that absolutely, definitely will not and can’t be moved or changed. For example, on a large scale project – even a new one – it will generally be architectural features and materials or even a company logo. It may even be an external material that will have a bearing on what should happen inside the building. For a small project – like your home – it might be items of furniture you’d like to keep, right down to the smallest of ornaments. Take note! These ‘starting point’ items are just that, starting points for the rest of your design. If your starting points do not belong to your vision from Golden Rule no. 3, make a choice - either change your vision or part with those starting points that aren’t singing from the same song book.

Develop your colour schemes for each room using your starting points. If you’re not a colour expert, you’ll need help because colour is one of the most fundamental elements of interior design. I’m not going to go into a whole lecture on colour theory.  Suffice it to say, that your colour schemes will make or break the design, so consider them carefully and document them using paint swatches at the very least. Stray from your colour schemes at your own peril. If you don’t stick to them – and I mean in every single item in the space – then you will end up with a MESS, which stands for Mediocre Everyday Sloppy Space.

Define the functional requirements. What are the technical and practical aspects of the space that must be met?  Is it light, heating, storage, anti slip, durability, strength, privacy, wet areas, weather proof, sun proof or snow proof? How many people does this space need to cater to? What about their comfort? I stopped for a coffee at a café yesterday. I decided to drink it sitting at a cool, outdoor bar on the side walk. I sat on a swivel stool and discovered that the pavement beneath me was sloping – away from the café! Do you think I could stay facing the bench? No! I kept swiveling in the other direction, away from my coffee, down hill toward the road – not good when I was really looking forward to that coffee! This serves as a very funny example of specifying a product that didn’t meet the functional requirements.  

Source your products & materials, starting with the ones that have the most limited colour palettes and moving to those that have the most flexible colour palettes [e.g. paint colours]. Do as much sourcing as you can via the net and over the phone unless you intend to spend the rest of your life visiting showrooms and being swamped by a plethora of fabulous choices. Remember, keep to your functional brief, keep to your budget and keep to your style direction. Remember that ‘style’ stake you put in the ground? Remember your colour schemes? Do not stray, or you’ll end up with a MESS.

Find really good suppliers. Rely on them for technical information about the products you are selecting, and cross check it with your builder. You will NEVER be an expert in all the technical nuances of all the products on the market. Accept this, take a deep breath and be willing to learn what you need to know for your project. Take your scaled floor plans with you and your colour swatches and your scale rule and your brief to remind you to stay on track and DO NOT COMPROMISE! It is better to walk away empty handed from a supplier if they don’t have the ‘just perfect’ item for your design and try somewhere else because the ‘just perfect’ item does exist. Why? There are millions of items out there for you to choose from!  

Document your design in detail. That means committing your choices to paper, in detail, and it includes floor plans showing furniture placement and elevations showing details for kitchens, bathrooms, custom joinery and the placement of artwork. Clear documentation will also help you budget for your project. For each and every item, you’ll need to know the following: price, dimensions, availability, supplier details, technical aspects and any other notes that the builder may need.  

Lock in the design before building. Brief the builder when you’re about 80% complete, not when you’re 100%, and you’ve set your design in stone. Why? Because good builders are exceptionally knowledgeable about the practicalities of implementing your design, they can often save you or the project very large amounts of money by achieving a similar outcome in smarter ways. Discuss the design with the builder, and be willing to make adjustments that are both tasteful and practical before locking in your design. And when I say locking in, I mean that’s it! No more meddling, no more last minute changes after the builder has begun, unless of course both time and money is absolutely no object. To make changes to the design once building has started and products have been ordered is very costly to you and very annoying to all and sundry working on the project. Your design work should be 99% complete before the building commences. The remaining 1% of the design work is simply to check for defects after the builders have completed the implementation of your design and to ask for them to be fixed.  

There is an 11^th Golden Rule, but it almost goes without saying. When the project is complete, do yourself [and everyone else who has worked so hard to bring the design to life] a favour and get together on site for a glass of champagne to celebrate! You’ll all deserve it. There are probably more than 10 Golden Rules, but these are the ones I think are the most important. I look forward to your comments. Happy designing! Ciao.