How to Make a Design Layout Before Designing a Room

Measure the room and reproduce it to scale on a large sheet of graph paper. Use at least four small squares per foot so that you have a large enough area in which to fit scaled models of your furniture. Measure the height of the ceiling, the width and height of each wall, and the dimensions of the features such as doors, windows and extras such as radiators, fireplace, window seats, recesses and built-in shelves. BBC Homes advises that you draw arcs to show which way doors open and how far they extend inward or outward when open.

Make a separate drawing for each wall from a front elevation, meaning that you draw them as a diagram of each wall. Annotate them with the measurements you took for the specific features, and mark wall sockets.

Measure the furniture you plan to have in the room, and reproduce simple outlines on graph paper. Cut these out and stick them to cardboard, then cut around the outline. Turn them over so that the cardboard is facing up, and label each one.

Place the cardboard shapes on your floor plan and arrange them in a way that makes the best use of space. If you're planning on buying extra pieces of furniture, make a cardboard cutout for each, although you will have to be approximate about the dimensions.

Take pictures with a digital camera of each aspect of the room. These photographs are useful in combination with the to-scale drawings when you go shopping for fixtures, fittings and fabrics, as they jog your memory when you're wanting to visualize a piece of furniture or drapes in position.

Source colors, fabrics and design ideas from magazines, cut them out and attach them to a cork board. Find images that suggest the mood, lifestyle and ambience you're hoping to create. Pick up color cards from a paint supplier and add them to the board. Be as creative and as far-fetched as you like; brainstorming and experimentation often give the best final results.