My Step By Step Process for Designing a Room of Furniture

There is a reason designers design great spaces. They follow a step by step process that, like most processes, doesn’t work as well when steps are missing.

When it comes to designing a room for a client, I lean on the tools and systems I’ve created over nearly two decades of professional interior design practice.

That’s A LOT of years of lessons learned + trial and error to hone in on the most streamlined and successful home furnishing process. The MMDH Furnishing Method is the exact system I’ve built to implement in my own design business.

This course covers a boatload of information that we’ve heard from our students is super easy to consume, comprehend, and put into immediate action. Our ultimate goals achieved 🙌

Our steps in a nutshell…

DESIGN-READY MINDSET & GOAL SETTING

Get crystal clear on YOUR true feelings about your house and the level of design you would love to take it to. Gain the confidence you need to see your inspiration through to a completed space.

PROCESS & INSPIRATION

It is so easy to get distracted by all of the latest home trends, and forget what your bigger picture home goals are. Try regrouping with an ever-evolving mood board. It’s a life-giving task that can remind you where you’re headed.

Our FREE MMDH Mood Board Method “mini-course” gives you a quick and thorough taste of my teaching style through five video tutorials. I’ve poured all of my mood board building tips into this guide, so you don’t waste another minute dreaming without a tangible visual that has the incredible potential of bringing your dreams to life. You can check it out, here!

PLANNING

This is the step that most homeowners are missing when it comes to furnishing a room. You know, the pencil to paper process vs. the eyeball and pray for the best step? Yep, that’s it.

There is not a designer on the planet who does not do their fair share of eyeballing throughout the design process, although you will be hard pressed to find ANY designer who does not put a room of furnishing on paper before placing an order! Holy smokes, this gives me the heebee geebees just thinking about ordering furniture without scaling it out in plan mode, and I’ve furnished HUNDREDS of spaces in my day!!

If you haven’t drawn up a very literal scaled plan of your space, do it! Grab a piece of graph paper and make a scaled drawing of your space. Each square on the graph paper can equal one foot if you have a larger room OR each square equals six inches in real space (ie: two squares equals one foot if you want to scale it up a bit 👍).

Sit in your space, take it all in and think about what you want to achieve with its design. Then draw up your ideas on paper and make them happen!

SOURCING / RETAILERS

There is so much to think about when ramping up your surroundings, Friends! That’s why there are experts 🤗 I’m actually not talking about me, or really any practicing interior designer necessarily. Nearly every furnishing retailer and material source has experts on the ready to help you help yourself!

Yep, they are there… ready to help. Find a great sales rep or designer who is less interested in pushing sales, and more interested in guiding you through the process. I PROMISE they are out there.

Trust the process! Ask thoughtful questions! Respect their expertise! They are there for you.

BUDGET + PURCHASING

One massive bonus of our course is that we share our budget tracking and purchasing spreadsheet with you – this comes with an extra tab of our go-to vendors (worth the price of admission in itself, if our students do say so – jam-packed with goodness!).

There is A LOT to be said for an organized home furnishing process. Itemize your purchases with product details, actual costs vs. your budget, phasing options, high/low mix opportunities, and lead time tracking! This is critical now more than ever for both designers AND homeowners.

INSTALL + STYLING

Yep, maybe the one step we’d all like to skip ahead to in the process. The most rewarding and tactile part of the process that not only can give you a total sense of accomplishment, but also of peace, comfort, ease…

It’s funny, with all of the steps completed above, this one should be zero sweat, although we have actually debated on separating this module of our course out into its own course! We get ENDLESS questions about styling a space, as we should.

While installing a space after following all of the steps above should be a no brainer, there is nothing cut and dry about styling a space to make it feel complete. That is why I walk into so many homes full of furniture that still feel “off”.

This step of the process is all about closing out the steps above, and trusting your gut with a few full-proof tips to guide you in the right direction. Life is too short to not love the home you live in. Fill that puppy with a dose of your styling personality and there is no doubt you will be thrilled with the outcome.

Anywho…

The MMDH Furnishing Method is a clutch tool to walk you through all of the above, and soak in a couple of decades of professional experience in six easy to follow modules that we’ve heard from our students require are the perfect level of time commitment to manage with all you have going on in your life, and still see legit results.

The doors are open to The MMDH Furnishing Method! Check it out in the link below!

xo,

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