Interior Design: Expert advice on moving into your new home

By Kyra Cotgrave, Home Designer at Neptune Farnham.

Moving to a new home is both exciting and stressful in equal parts, when you finally get the keys to the front door there is a host of possibilities on how best to decorate and furnish all those new rooms. Space-planning and editing of existing furnishings can be daunting for some and having professional guidance can sometimes be the answer. Objects that you have had for years, things that are so familiar to you that they have almost become invisible, will take on a whole new lease of life when placed in new surroundings.

My advice is to start planning your space well before you actually move into your new home. Consider pieces that you know you will be taking with you and plot them into the floorplan to make sure you have sufficient clearance space to walk around everything. Consider how each room will be used, do you need new window treatments, does the floorcovering have to be replaced? And then you can start thinking about the fun things like colour, style and texture.

Creating a sample board for each room is an ideal way to visualise the relationship between the colours and textures. Mount samples of paint, wallpaper, floorcovering, fabrics etc onto a piece of board, overlapping the samples so that you can see how they all work together. You could also include photographs of rooms that fit your vision. Our Neptune home designers create both a mood board and a sample board for each room as we feel it is the best way to convey the atmosphere of the finished room. A mood board is just that, a photographic montage that expresses the mood of the room: what kind of atmosphere do you want to create? Concentrate on the five senses and find pictures that illustrate what you can see, taste, hear, feel and smell in the room.

The home design service at Neptune is a cost-effective way of utilising the talents of an interior designer without the fear of runaway fees. A set design fee per room is refunded once a minimum spend per room has been met, so most customers get all the benefits of the service without having to spend thousands of pounds on hourly design fees. We can even help you to source antiques and artwork, or non-Neptune items to bring your home to life.

We are seeing a huge interest in dark, saturated colour at the moment. Our Ink paint proved incredibly popular last season and there is also a lot of demand for charcoal grey, dark walnut brown and navy blue. It can be scary applying that initial brush stroke but dark colours immediately create a sense of intimacy and sophistication. And if painting an entire room in inky blue/black terrifies you, why not start with an accent wall?

The general message is to take your time. Don’t try to get the entire house finished in the first month, prioritise the most important areas and concentrate on those first. And finally, don’t let the stress of the situation rob you of the pleasure involved in making a new home for you and your family. This is an exciting new beginning and should be celebrated. And if the mere idea fills you with dread and confusion, consider the benefits of using a professional to help prevent expensive mistakes and to give you the finished results you thought only appeared in magazines.

Kyra Cotgrave, Home Designer at Neptune Farnham.
16 Folly Hill, Farnham, GU9 0BB.
Tel: 01252 713047 Kyra.Cotgrave@neptune.com