How to Have Fun with Your Interior Without Spending a Cent.

How to Have Fun with Your Interior Without Spending a Cent!

In the current world financial situation, money no longer grows on trees! Did it ever?

Money is a lot harder to come by, people are afraid of losing their jobs, worried about their financial future and less likely to be committing to making major changes to their home interiors, but that doesn't mean we have to sit back and put up with the status quo. We can have fun and change our interiors without having to spend a cent. We just need to get a little creative! Here are some ideas on how you can make your home feel like it has had a makeover without spending a cent.

• shift furniture into different rooms, it's amazing how a change of environment can make a piece of furniture look completely different
• rearrange your artwork on the walls, reposition mirrors - these help change the light in your room and depending on where you place them, can make a room feel larger
• clean your walls. I know this sounds too simple, but over time all the little knocks and bumps leave marks, from experience your existing walls can look like they have just been repainted if you give them a good scrub. I use sugar soap - brilliant stuff
• take down your curtains and give them a vacuum (Hoover - or whatever you call it in your country) Spot clean them, and as for above, they will look much brighter and look as good as new.
• have a chat with your neighbor and see if they want to swap any home decor for a few months until you both tire of it again. This could be an area rug, artificial flower arrangement, decorative pots, sculpture, wall hanging, vases, coat stands, foot stools, cushions, basically anything that you are sick of looking at. Instead of storing it in the garage or throwing it away, share it and when it comes time to swap back, you may have created new feelings for it!
• some banks, stores and credit card companies offer rewards points or dollars. Have you thought about using those to get a few new decorative items for your home. An easy way to have the feel good factor of something new without having to part with any money.
• dig to the back of your linen cupboard and pull out the towels that never get used, bring them to the front and it will feel like you have new towels for your bathroom.
• the same can be said for bed linen, sheets, duvet covers, pillow slips, cushion covers and bedspreads. We often have more than one but forget about them stuffed down the back of the cupboard, clean out the cupboards and see what you can drag out, mix and match them in your different rooms and you have a new look! Check for throw rugs and cushions that may have been stored away, drag them out give them a dust and find them a new home and store your existing ones back in the cupboard!
• look in the garage for things that have been put away. Pack up things in the house that you have had enough of looking at, and swap them over. These could be floor standing lamps, side table lamps, collections of glass figurines, children's crafts that you just couldn't part with, and could provide a talking point now they have grown up, a stack of vintage suitcases that you didn't know what to do with, place a linen cover on top and use them as a side table, similar thing with old hat boxes
• paint the outdoor pots a different color, let's face it we all have paint lying around in our garage, take it out and give the outside a revamp, perhaps paint the front door a new color, or the letterbox
  
• make a feature wall from spare wallpaper, if it's textured you could always paint it to add color, or just paint a wall and make it a feature

Well those are just a few ideas to get you started. You can take on the challenge and give your home a quick makeover by using some of these ideas, I bet you will start to think of more as you get started. If you do, add them to the comments at the bottom of this post and share them with us.

Have fun!

find more interior decorating tips

How do you become a professional interior designer?

How do you become a professional interior designer?

This is a question that I get asked frequently by readers. It is very difficult to answer because all countries have different criteria. So I will give you a brief overview of how I see the path to becoming an interior designer.

Firstly you need to have the desire and passion for interiors, if not you will never make it through the learning period.

Secondly, you need to be able to access quality education. This is easier said than done, and I get asked frequently to recommend education facilities worldwide. Unfortunately I do not have intimate knowledge about global interior design education facilities and who is best in each region, but I can give you some tips on finding the right education facility for you.

• find out from you local interior design institute or association what are the minimum requirements for you to become a registered or practicing interior designer in your country, then make sure that the education facility will provide you with that opportunity as a minimum.
• find out the time frame and make sure it fits with your current lifestyle.
• find out the price of the course and make certain that you are getting value for money by comparing the curriculum of different facilities available to you against how much they charge and how much tutoring time you will receive. (Here are two places on the interiordezine.com website where you can search for design schools and find education facilities.)
  
• check if they offer you one on one tutoring or question and answer time or are you just set assignments to answer and then receive grades. Feedback is very important for interior design as it is a creative vocation, and not simply black and white, yes or no answer education.
• ring around local interior design practices and see if you can get some work experience and make sure it is the desired vocation for you. If this is not possible, call them on the phone and ask what sort of education and experience would they require to employ an interior designer at their practice. This will start to give you an idea on how hard or how easy this journey will be for you

Thirdly, test the water! As I mentioned above, contact a local interior design practice. Ask if they would be happy to have you "hanging around" whilst you are studying to learn and get some real experience of how the industry works, this is so important, because interior design is not just about making interiors look good, there is a great deal of planning, paperwork, client interaction, and management involved and these areas can be very stressful, so if you aren't an organized person, being a professional interior designer could be a struggle for you. Try short courses on interior design or areas of interior decorating that interest you, get some background training and make sure that you want to take the step to become a professional interior designer. Obviously interiordezine.com is a great place to do this testing as we offer you free ecourses on interior decorating, color and curtain design. These ecourses are extensive, cover a great deal of information and give you the wonderful opportunity of making sound decisions on your future. If you partake in these ecourse, enjoy them and feel the desire to learn more, then your decision is made. Get out there and become a professional interior designer.

Finally continuing education, as an interior designer it is vital that you constantly keep learning about your industry. It changes constantly like any other area that has trends and fashion.
At interiordezine.com we offer a website that will help back you up on your learning, you can do your research there, search for product and materials information, learn about fittings and fixtures, get ideas for brain storming design concepts, learn the "lingo" of designers by using the glossary and get prompted by our newsletters to read something of interest about interiors and keep your creative mind active.

So to conclude, some countries do not have any form of registration to become an interior designer, whilst this is good for you, it also means that the industry in your country could have "cowboys" or unprofessionals. This means that the industry will probably have a bad reputation, no set standards or guidelines which makes it difficult to quote or estimate for projects as you don't know what your opposition will be pricing on and the consumer often does not have realistic expectations. The best thing to do here is set your own standards, get a good reputation and by word of mouth you should be able to succeed. For the countries with quality registration practices, then you know that if you pass, you have a high quality education and are employable, and the industry should have a good name.

I hope that this will provide you with some tools to help guide your career. If anyone has comments about any education facilities that have been to and liked or disliked, then feel free to share them with us by commenting below.

Chris Brown, is currently writing a new website specifically designed for professional interior designers. He wants to know what information would be useful to you in your current position. He will be covering areas like project management, contractors and consultants, marketing your business, presentation drawing, drafting and documentation, contracts, construction, CAD and more. If there is anything that you can think of that would be an advantage to you as a professional, then please make a comment below, or fill out the poll on the left.

Sorry, I know this is a long post, but if you have a few spare moments could you please vote for us as the best education website at the vote for us link. Scroll down to best education website and put interiordezine.com into the space and send off your vote. Thanks in advance!

Where do Interior Designers get their Ideas from?

Where Do Interior Designers Get Their Ideas From?

I am constantly being asked this question, and I must admit, that as the years go by I start to feel that I struggle to come up with something new and original myself. I think that this is because I am a conscientious designer who takes the time to get to know my client and strives to create something unique and original each time. What is original? Interior design and decorating has so many influences, be it historic, ethnic, locational, budgetary, personal, environmental to name a few.

Where am I going with this train of thought?

Good question, I'm not sure myself, but I do know that the longer you are in the interior design and decorating industry, the harder it becomes to create really great interiors. It is like any good relationship, you start to take things for granted over time and things become average and boring, they lack passion and direction and you think you know it all. This starts to show in your work.

So how do you put back the spark into the relationship between you and design?

You have to go back to the basics and find out what inspired you to be passionate about interiors in the first place. I have been doing this recently whilst updating the website. I have been looking at photos of interiors from all over the world and remembering what inspired me in the first place. A beautiful Trompe l'oeil ceiling in London. This one room got me thinking and started my passion for interiors.


Here is a photo I just found that reminded me and got me enthusiastic again, recharged my batteries you could say. Gave me inspiration to get out there and start researching for different looks and styles, get back into the heart of design and see how vast and varied the designs are around the world.

As a side note here while I remember: To all of you who have added your photos to Interior-dezine-pix.com, I say a big thanks, as it was refreshing to see so many inspiring designs coming through. Keep up the good work. Feel free to go and look at others work and make comments and get fresh ideas.

I suppose the answer to the question posed to me "Where Do Interior Designers Get Their Ideas From?" is that they come from all over and they come in bits and pieces. Designers have creative minds, they are also very visual and are constantly storing design ideas. (If you have done one of my ecourses then you will know I tell you to keep a scrapbook or notebook of things that you see to keep as a reference guide for brain storming design ideas.)

• When they take a walk in the park, they see colors and textures, organic forms
  
• Visit a furniture store, fabrics and timbers can spark ideas
  
• Read magazines, photographs trigger new concepts and question new ways of thought
  
• Visit websites, see the world of design, step outside your locality
• Travel, see and smell new colors and scents, learn customs and local design
• Dare I say it - Watch TV, you can travel from your living room these days, the experience is not as tactile as the real thing but a great way to get ideas.

So how an I help you to keep your design ideas fresh and flowing?

By guiding you to pages on the interiordezine.com website of course.

If you want to get ideas of different interiors to get you thinking and expanding your current design scope then visit the following pages.

Bathroom Design Ideas
Bedroom Design Ideas
Kitchen Design Ideas
Color Scheme Ideas
Curtain Design Ideas

I hope this will help you keep your inspiration and passion for interior design and decoration.
If anyone else has other ideas, feel free to add them in the comments section, as I can always do with more inspiration!

Interior Decorating Quiz

Interior Decorating Quiz

This time I am writing about new things on our website.

We now have an automated quiz on interior decorating. How cool!

Go and test your knowledge on interior decorating here.

Then send me your results to go into the draw for a mystery prize.

There will be more quizzes coming, as they seem to be popular with our readers, as they are fun, easy to do and educational.

We also want to get some recognition for our website, so if you have a few moments and you love our website, could you do us a big favor and make a vote for our website, or two if it lets you!

Please vote for us as your favorite education website

scroll down the categories to find the category
Best Education Site Sponsored By ... Toshiba

Put in www.interiordezine.com and press send and you will be giving us your vote. Thanks

Kitchen Design - the Fridge, the Freezer and the Microwave

Kitchen Design - the Fridge, the Freezer and the Microwave

I know this topic doesn't sound riveting, but it is important in kitchen design. After just returning from holiday and living in a holiday house, I realized just how often I used the freezer. This house had the freezer outside in the laundry or wash house as some people call it. The was a rather large refrigerator in the kitchen itself, but the freezer was outside.

As a mother with young children I use the freezer often. Whilst away my youngest child happened to slam his fingers in the door, at home it takes me 10 seconds to grab the frozen gel pack out of the freezer and bang it on his hand! I had to run outside and grab the ice having to leave him screaming in pain. I know that this isn't something that happens frequently through out the day, but just think, we were there in autumn, so ice cold drinks or ice blocks, ice creams weren't high on the list of desires for us, but in summer, you would be running outside every time you wanted to put ice in your drink, or grab an ice block (not sure what else to call these, in New Zealand we say ice block meaning a frozen ice cream or flavored ice on a stick) and it would drive you crazy.

The microwave was stuck up on a shelf so high above the hob, that I could hardly reach the controls, let alone safely get food in and out of it. A disaster waiting to happen.

So what is my point? My point is that even though you think you may not use something in your kitchen often, you can be surprised if you actually count how many times you do.
This all comes down to planning and design. For example, in my last three kitchens, for some reason the microwave has always been overlooked. The first time because someone else designed the kitchen and the microwave had to sit on the bench, the second the cabinet maker or joiner decided to redesign the pantry making the required space for the microwave too small, so it never fit in the hole, and my current kitchen, the cabinet maker or joiner once again had a bright idea to change the style of doors from bi folding to outward swinging, now every time I open the doors to use the microwave, I have to make sure someone isn't coming through my kitchen door as the doors to the microwave cupboard hit the door and they get a door stopped short in their face!

Sounds great for a designers kitchen doesn't it, and do you know how often I use the microwave from when we originally planned the kitchen work space? About 10 times more than I ever had, because now I have children I spend 5 times more time in the kitchen making snacks as well as meals, kids eat constantly!

So what I really want to highlight is to not overlook what we see as everyday kitchen appliances and just place them where they fit, we need to consider how much and how often we use them and make sure that we provide enough space for them to be incorporated into the kitchen workflow, or triangle as some call it.

Kitchen design looks easy when you see the end result, but as I have just experienced, looks can be deceiving, the kitchen needs to be workable, and boy do you realize it quickly when it doesn't!

We are in the process of writing an ecourse on kitchen design, so if you are interested stay tuned, as we will keep you updated for when it will be available. If you have a minute to spare, you could fill out the poll on the top right of this blog and tell us what interests you want to learn about in kitchen design. We want to make sure we deliver what you want to learn.

So if you found my post riveting you could go and learn more about refrigerators and freezers,
or take a look at some kitchen design critiques and see what you think of the designs and layouts here.

Helping Hand for Creating Color Schemes

Helping Hand for Creating Color Schemes

Creating color schemes sounds like an easy thing to do. Just look at a few swatches and pick a few colors! I once met a designer, who did exactly that, and I can tell you that the end result was awful. All the work that had gone into the architectural and interior design was ruined by the choices of color. It looked awkward and unconsidered and very unprofessional, if I was the client, I wouldn't have been happy.

Interior designers and decorators don't just randomly pick colors because they like them, they make well considered choices based on color theory and a good client brief of what the end expectations of the project are. That way you are guaranteed to create an interior that works for your client.

If you are interested in working with color, be it as a professional or if you just want to learn to do it for your own home decorating, then I will give you a helping hand. I have a free ecourse on color available that goes through all the aspects of creating color schemes for home interior decorating and design.

To learn more about what you will learn visit Free eCourse on Color for Home Decorating and Design

or fill out the form below

How do you Survive the Global Recession as an Interior Designer

How do you survive the global recession as an interior designer?

Times are tough out there for everyone, so I am going to give you a few tips on how you can weather the storm and come out the other side with your business stronger.

Below are some tips or ideas on getting the most out of your business and staying a float in the current economic market. You can choose to do some or none, it depends how well your business is currently faring.

1. Take out your financial accounts and review them, find out where most of your outgoings are are see where you can trim them.
2. Streamline your office supplies, do you really need that cute little embossed leather bound folder to take to meetings or would a clipboard do? Get your real necessities delivered so you don't impulse buy.
   
3. Streamline your travel commitments. Think ahead, could you call in at suppliers on your way to work or way home, could you make your appointments to coordinate so you don't have to go to and from the office in between, saving you time and money.
4. Use the Internet and the telephone to source your products and suppliers. I know you love to "window shop" and get the feel good factor, but try and do as much as you can from the office.
5. Get sales representatives to come to you with their product for a project. If they want you to specify it, then they can spare the time to come and show you what they have and why you should use it. Let them work hard to sell it. It saves you time and money driving around the town visiting all the showrooms.
   
6. Visit the library for your design magazine browsing. Magazines are a cost that you could for go for a while until the economy picks up again. You will be surprised by the titles you find and international magazines available.
   
7. Use any down time wisely, go through your old magazines and make up scrap books for your clients, group together styles of bathrooms or kitchens etc to save you time with your clients at a later date when you are brain storming to find their particular taste, likes and dislikes.
   
8. Get your clients to sell their old things they no longer need in the room you intend on redesigning or decorating, this will make them feel better about going ahead and doing something new now as it will reduce the costs and hopefully encourage them to go ahead with the project instead of waiting till financial times get better. You will be surprised how many people will out bid each other for your clients old curtains at online auctions!
   
9. Think reupholster instead of buy new, this can also make a project more feasible for a client. Reuse items they already have, repaint or refinish joinery, furniture and picture frames, new cushion or pillow covers, new tiebacks for existing curtains, check the garage for hidden treasures.
   
10. Use this time to set up a website and start getting yourself listed in local design directories. Ring all your past clients and update their details and start a database so you can keep in touch with them, it's much easier to work on existing relationships than find new ones. A simple newsletter or blog will do, hey just like me!
    
11. Focus on building relationships with current clients and offer incentives for positive word of mouth referrals.
    
12. Have a look at how you market your business. Is it working? Can you measure how much each new client costs you to get? If not, try something new.
    
13. Network! Network hard to get more clients, join community clubs, offer a free service in a high profile area, your local school perhaps, provide them with a free color scheme and then promote it like crazy! Nothing over the top like design a new building but something that will make an impact and get people talking about you.
    
14. If you need to employ extra staff but don't want to commit in uncertain times, then hold and get help from an eager student or two and give them work experience. You never know, you may find the person that you want to hire at a later date this way, and it is helping out the design community by giving students a chance to get experience in a design business.
15. This is the biggest and most important tip I can give you. DO NOT DROP YOUR FEES! You need to keep your professionalism. By dropping fees you actually make it harder for yourself to survive. You need to work longer hours to make the same money you did before. Then it only takes one client not to pay and you are in trouble.
16. So a way to keep your fees the same and make sure you keep your clients paying you is to offer them a payment plan. This way you all get a good deal. They pay in small amounts as you work, and you know if they miss payments then you stop working on their project. You don't lose a huge fee, and you don't give them free work, allowing you to work on projects where the client is paying you!
17. If your clients dry up a little, use the time to study in an area that you feel you have a weakness, we all have one! Perhaps CAD, or something for the future to do with sustainability. This will increase your repertoire for when you get busier again.

I know there are probably many more tips I could provide, but I need to get back to work and make some money too! The Global Recession has reached New Zealand!

If you want to find out more ways to streamline your design business and get it working for you, Chris Brown has written an ebook encompassing all areas of a design practice. You can read more about it here.

If you want to get studying for free you can always sign up for the interior decorating or curtain design ecourse we provide. Yes I know you are all waiting for the color ecourse and the kitchen design ecourse, I have no excuses, they are still underway, the website redesign has taken a lot longer than we expected, so stay subscribed and I will keep you in touch.

If you didn't get the latest newsletter, then you won't know about the free toolbar you can download from the website. This gives you quick and easy access to our website when you need it. A great way to keep up your learning in your downtime! You can find the free toolbar here.

Bye for now and best wishes for surviving the global recession.

Oh and feel free to add any ideas that you have for getting through this difficult financial times in the comments, the more ideas the better, if we all do our best to make positive changes, the economy will pick up so much faster.