Starting from Scratch

[Cesaly Garrett]

I LOVE everything you do here. I just wish I would had known about you sooner. I love your videos on design and fashion. I am in the process of redoing my bedroom. I am completely gutting it and starting from nothing. I’m having a hard time putting my vision together. I love Pinterest just like you and I have a few ideas going but I just feel like it’s all over the place. When designing a room, how do you make it cohesive?

[Mr. Kate]

Hey Cesaly!!

Welcome to the fam! I’m happy to meet you and that you’ve joined our community of creative weirdos!

Starting to design a room can definitely be daunting, especially when you have a million thoughts and ideas that don’t always go together, like I do sometimes! I do find Pinterest to be a helpful way to gather ideas and inspirations — put all of the pictures you like into a board, then take a few hours or even a day away from it. When you come back to it with fresh eyes, you’ll be able to see the common threads of what you’ve put together.

You can see this kind of a process in my Master Bathroom Pinterest Board — there are over 200 photos, but the major ideas are pretty clear when seen all together: black and white tiles, arched doorways, round mirrors.

The next step is taking inventory of what you have, what you can make, and the functionality of the space. This will let you think about the pieces to add, and DIYs to do that will tie in some of ideas you’ve picked out from your Pinteresting.

What I find helpful next is making a moodboard. Polyvore can be really helpful in this — even if they don’t have the exact items you do or want to use, they’re bound to have something similar. Or you can draw it, make it on Photoshop, collage it with magazine cut outs … anything that helps you visualize the layout of the space! This step is really important in getting a cohesive look, since you can see how the different decorations and pieces of furniture will relate to each other and play off each other.

I’m not a huge fan of rules when it comes to interior design, (I prefer to live by a #whynot philosophy!) but when it comes to cohesion, I’d say to keep track of the colors, textures, and shapes you’re including. Think of color families — you don’t have to use accents of all the same blue, but keeping accents in the same cool toned family will tie everything together nicely. I explained some tricks like this in my recent video with David Bromstad, if you want to check that out!

I hope this was helpful, Cesaly!

XO!

[Author]

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