5 Essential Stages for Designing a Beautiful Interior By May Alrufiae
May Alrufiae has been so kind to share her 5 essential stages for designing a beautiful interior. May Alrufiae is a talented, passionate and innovative Saudi interior designerliving in Dubai, with experience both from the industry service provider side and the developer side. Responsible for major mix use development including residential, commercial and hospitality projects. Creating brand and establishing identity Presenting concept and detail design development. Particular attention to finishes, details, cost & design development taking in consideration the business plan from inception to completion.
Contact may@mayinteriors.com
Stage 1 - Decide on The Room's Purpose
Try to narrow things down and let the room's real purpose decide the design. For example, if your room will be a living room that you'll amuse in on just a few events or a family room you're going to use every day. A room's purpose should be one of the strongest hints for the design, this will immediately establish a guide line for you, and make it super easy for you to choose the furniture and pieces you want to include in this room, it will also help you with the colors you want to use to create the mood for this room depending on the purpose.
Stage 2 - Start with A Signature Piece & Make It Personal
Your room should be a reflection of your style. In fact, designers consider their work a success when clients say a room feels like their own. Blow up a beautiful family photo taken on a recent vacation. Devote a shelf to favorite books or souvenirs.
Sometimes an item you already have and love can become the inspiration for the rest of the room and have the full interior revolve around it. "It can be one chair, one rug or an artwork".
Stage 3 - Take Accurate Sizes
One of the biggest issues facing homeowners today is the over sized furniture, which is not to scale with the room.
The solution? Take out a measuring tape and measure the room accurately; you can even draw a floor plan to scale using graph paper (let one square equal one meter, for instance). Make sure to take your floor plan when you go furniture shopping and mark off their intended location and make sure they'll fit before buying them. As a general rule, it's best to always match furniture's scale to the room's overall scale. An oversized sofa in a small room will look out of place and make the space feel small.
Stage 4 - Light Up The Room
"Lighting can make or break an interior," make sure to have a variety of lighting installed in every room. Include task lighting focused on what you'll be doing in the room, whether it's reading or checking your e-mail, as well as ambiant lighting to set the right mood. Try converting your light switches to dimmers, they allow for flexibility depending on the time of day, event, or mood, and they are a great energy saver.
Choosing the correct bulbs and fixtures will create a welcoming environment. One of the biggest mistakes is excessively bright lighting, for example in living rooms, use a combination of floor lamps, table lamps, and down-lights, and in master bedrooms use good reading lights at the bed, and a task light in your walk-in closet.
Stage 5 - Decide on your focal point
Definition:
An area visually important enough to draw and hold attention. The object or area where the eye is drawn first.
Basically, it's what your eye is going to go straight towards when you walk into a room and keep coming back to time and time again.
A focal point is one of those things that grounds a room and gives your eyes a place to land. It gives you that sense of balance and stability because your mind and eyes aren't trying to figure out what's going on and where to look.
The focal point of a room influences the arrangement of furniture. It also takes the focus off the less attractive features of the room.
How to find them or create them? A straight forward fireplace makes an excellent focal point, and sometimes, all a room needs is one large, eye-catching piece of art to serve as a focal point. Look for special features in a room or strong architectural details like an exposed brick wall, an unusual shape to the room or arches, high ceilings, interesting ceiling details such as exposed wood beams, angled walls, Any of these features can be the focal point of a room with the right lighting and paint color.
