The One Thing You MUST Do Before Decorating | Interior Design Basics

Today we are learning the one thing that you absolutely must do to decorate a room that looks fabulous and feels really personal. So this past year we've done lots of design projects and I've had lots of questions from you and most of the time it comes back to how do I make great choices for my room. Choices that are going to stand the test of time and be timeless and also reflect my personality and how do I pick my paint colors and how to pick this rug and this fabric and the materials and really it all comes down to making one vital decision and that is choosing your hero inspiration. Okay so stay with me I'm going to explain this and by the end of this video you're going to know how to put a really fabulous room or entire home together. So the very first thing that we do when we are starting a design project with a new client is we gather inspiration and we talk to them about what inspires them. How they want to live in their home of course. How things need to function but also what visually lights them up. It could be a piece of art. It could be a really incredible antique rug that they you know inherited from their grandmother. It could be maybe something that they picked up on a vacation. It could be a book. It could be like a piece of clothing that they love. Something that just makes them feel so inspired and gives the feeling that they want their home to embody. So when we start a project out a lot of times we're doing an entire home. One of the very first decisions that we make as designers is the countertops for the kitchen. So let's talk about this hero inspiration selection as it refers to kitchen countertops. So I have a client that we're working on their project right now. Demo starts next week. I'm so excited and this client happens to be my sister so it's going to be really really fun. She has such an incredible style and she loves unexpected things. So we are doing Calcutta Viola. This is the marble that we're doing on their countertops and we're actually doing an entire fireplace surround in it. It's going to be the hearth as well. So Calcutta Viola has really unique veining and some really great color components within the veining. It's got a beautiful aubergine, some umber undertones, graphites, creams, all of these gorgeous colors that are going to set the tone for the color palette for the rooms that we're including this stone in. If you're building from you know ground up or you're doing a kitchen renovation or even a bathroom renovation, I would say pick your natural stone first because it's really going to be the jumping off point for other material selections and it makes it so much easier. When you try to design or decorate a room without a hero inspiration, whether it's countertops or a rug or a piece of art or whatever, it's like trying to choose between oh I don't know lemon butter sauce and honey mustard when you don't even know what you're ordering for dinner. Like you would never choose the sauces before you chose your entree. So you need to choose your entree of your room which is your hero inspiration. Okay so that's kind of how we do it when we are doing a whole home color palette. We start with the countertops in the kitchen. Now I'm going to show you something else. If say you know that you have a room that you want to wallpaper the walls. Okay this is a really great example. Got several different options but I'm going to show you two of them because they're the same wallpaper but they're in different completely different color palettes. Okay so this one all these really beautiful blues a little bit more ethereal kind of more calming and then this bright punch of color that has all of these really deep jewel tones in it. Same wallpaper different color palettes and it's going to really give you a different feel. Now yes both of these wallpapers regardless of the color palette are going to be a statement. As you can see either one of these would give us the jumping off point for designing the rest of the space. So let's say I went with this one. Okay we've got all of these deep jewel tones. What I would probably do is pick one of these colors as the paint for all the trim work like the millwork in the room. So the crown molding, the base, the door casings, the door. This is on one of my paint trends 2026 paint trends color palettes. It's called Brinjal. It's how fabulous all of the millwork would be if it was painted in this because of this wallpaper. Now would I have come to this selection without having this chosen first? No way. I mean I love this paint color but I would have never been like okay let's paint the trim this color and let's find a wallpaper that matches. Huh that is backwards and makes it so much more difficult from a design like hierarchy perspective. So pick your hero first. The rest of the choices will come behind and they'll be a lot easier to be made. Also look at this. This is that same viola and how fabulous would that look in that powder room because it's got that aubergine color in it. So fabulous. So that's one way to do it. Well that is the way to do it. So you have a painting like this one. I love using art as an inspiration because not only does it help us build out a color palette but it also helps us build out a mood. So when we think about designing and decorating our rooms it's not just about making it look beautiful or everything feeling cohesive. It's also about the feeling that we're creating inside of that space. So let's look at this piece of art for a second and let's think about what type of a feeling a room that was designed around this piece of art would evoke. And actually I bought this piece of art for a client's home and I'm going to show you all the material selections that we made kind of using this as the hero inspiration. So I love the blues. I love how everything feels muted and soft but also has some depth in it and I love honestly just like the composition of the piece of art. It's an antique piece of art that I picked up last year at an estate sale. So I'm going to show you some of the things that we're putting in this particular home that work really really well with this piece of art. Now this home is somewhat open concept so the great room the foyer and the dining room are all one space and actually I filmed this home several of the kind of the process behind the design of this home on the channel if you want to check it out. It's Spec House to Dream Home. It's that whole series. We're not done with it yet. We haven't done the final install. All the furniture's been ordered but I just kind of want to show you how this piece of art was a jumping off point. So first and foremost this client loves blues and they're coming from a house that was super super traditional and they have a lot of golden red in their current home. So they wanted to get away from golden red. So we knew that we were going to do soft blues and then maybe a couple of dramatic punches of blues and browns and greens and all those tones. The great room is really large so we went with this rug. We wanted something that was going to be easy to clean and great for their grandkids and dogs and all the things. They have a lot of people in their home a lot. They host a lot. So we wanted something that was easy and didn't inject a ton of pattern into the room because we're doing that in other materials. Then we needed some type of a really beautiful hero fabric for the dining room and that ended up being this gorgeous fabric. So look at all of the colors that are in this fabric and as you can see even though like the vibe is a little bit different between the painting and the fabric you can see how it picks up all the colors that we really wanted to play up and the inspiration that we had from that piece of art. So that's going to be all the drapery in the dining room. We're doing drapery panels. Then we've got the furniture pieces in the great room and in the dining room so that's sofas. We've got some chairs in there obviously tables and all of that. So we started picking out fabrics that really brought out the colors and the feeling that we wanted and then look how beautiful this fabric selection looks with the piece of art. So it's all of those really beautiful blue tones. It feels somewhat masculine but some of the profiles on the upholstery pieces and some of the beautiful kind of tapered legs and details on some of the case goods also feels very feminine. So it's this combination of feminine and masculine. The drapery fabric is pretty feminine but you know when you have a family home and you've got a husband and a wife you really do have to balance the feminine and the masculine and I think we're doing that really beautifully. Some of the wood tones we've got in the space we've actually are very varied. We've got dark to light and then this is a tile that works really well with all of it. Oh sorry one last thing this is one of their powder room wallpapers. This is a really beautiful home and the material selections are very thoughtful and curated and they all started with an understanding of the feeling that our client wanted but also knowing that we had something guiding our decisions. We had a focal inspiration piece even if this piece of art is not going to be a focal point in the room obviously but for us as designers it's what guided a lot of our decisions that we made throughout the process of the home. Okay maybe you don't have a fabulous piece of art and maybe you don't have incredible wallpapers to use as your inspiration. That's okay. Maybe you have a really fabulous dress that you love and that the colors are perfect and this dress makes you feel so good every time that you wear it or it's a sweater or whatever. Maybe it's a piece of clothing out of your closet. That's why I actually put this top on today because I wanted to show you that something like this could be your hero inspiration for a room. Funny enough I bought this top and this skirt because I loved the pattern so much and I loved the color combination so much that I wanted to use it as my inspiration for my new family room. That is not a joke. I literally ordered it for that. I mean I love to wear it too but it's just all the colors that I love and the pattern is something that I'm really drawn to. So you could do that. You could pick something out of your closet that you know you're drawn to and that you love and that you want to use as your inspiration. Or maybe you have a little swatch of fabric. You know maybe you picked up an antique swatch of fabric at your local you know thrift store and that is what you want to use as your inspiration because hey you love the composition. You love the feeling that it evokes. Like this piece of fabric to me feels very nostalgic and it feels very comforting because it kind of reminds me of my grandmother. Maybe this is something that I want to use as an inspiration jumping off point for a guest bedroom and I love all the colors in it. This is my hero inspiration so I'm going to go in and I'm going to pull out the colors that really speak to me and for me I love lavender. It's like one of my very favorite colors and I love deep green like forest green and lavender and forest green. So maybe I go in and I pick out the green and I pick up the lavender and I pick out that really beautiful burgundy color and that's kind of the color palette that I use to build out the rest of the room. That I use to choose the bedding. That I use to choose the drapery fabrics. Also the rug. The wall paint or the wallpaper. The trim color. Even honestly the metals like this. Look at that. That's unlacquered brass. How beautiful is that with that fabric because it picks up all of those really beautiful buttery tones. I am getting so many questions about you know how do I choose this? Like what paint color do I need to use for this room or what rug should I choose? A lot of times when I get those questions from YouTube viewers or from our design community which is called the design fix or even from my own clients like design clients. There's no hero inspiration and it is just impossible to design in a vacuum of no no inspiration. So don't do that to yourself. Pick something to use and make all of your design decisions around that. It's going to make the process a lot easier. Okay two more things. First say you don't have a really incredible sweater that you want to choose or fabrics or any of that stuff. Maybe it's a book. It's actually a painting inside of one of my favorite design books. This is a cabana book and this would be also something really great to use as inspiration. It doesn't have to be something that you're going to actually hang you know a piece of art that you're going to hang in the room or a fabric that you're going to use in the room. It could be something as easy as an image out of one of your favorite books or you know something that you found online. I've got a video that I want you to check out if you're interested in learning how to build out these material selections. I'm gonna link it but also you'll see it at the end. It teaches you how to create design mood boards for your rooms and really how to hone in on what your you know your hero inspiration is and how to make your decisions and put them all onto a mood board so you can kind of see your design come to life. So I want you to check that out. Okay the last thing I want to show you is picking inspiration from something like a rug or even a ceramic piece. This is a really beautiful decanter that I picked up at an antique store and I love the feeling of it because it feels really artistic and creative to me and it's got some great colors so this would be something that could honestly build an entire room's palette and vibe around. Also this rug. It is fabulous. It's got such great colors in it and I could easily easily build out an entire room based on the motifs, the feeling, and the color palette of this rug. So let that be an inspiration to you that design can come from anywhere but when you are creating a whole home you know design palette or just for a single room you really need to start with inspiration. It makes it so much easier. Try this out just for fun. I'm not saying I mean you can design a whole room get after it and do it but even just for practice maybe choose something in your home that you love and just for practice pick some paint colors that look really good with it. Maybe go online and search other materials that you would want in the room. Maybe it's tile if it's a bathroom. Maybe it's you know some throw pillows if it's your living room and just work on building out a room's design based on hero inspiration. I promise you it's gonna make it so much easier if you do it this way. You will thank me later. Now I hope that you enjoyed this video. Like I said if you want to learn how to create your design mood boards I want you to meet me in this next video. Thanks for watching and I will see you there.