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Achieving the interiors equivalent of socks with sandals doesn’t tend to be high on anybody’s must-have list when they start thinking about decorating or redesigning the interior of their home. However, the worst mistakes you can make when decorating don’t involve avoiding specific colours or patterns, or inadvertently picking something gaudy or out of style; and nor do they come down to doing something wrong or physically messing something up along the way.
What are the worst decorating mistakes people make then? Well, thinking that watching a YouTube video made by a pro qualifies you with those same technical skills, doing something your partner or other housemates absolutely hate, and simply running out of steam/interest/motivation along the way are all high on the agenda.
In this blog post I will tell you the worst decorating mistakes you can make, why avoiding them is so integral to your success, and how to build solid foundations (not from a cold start of watching one YouTube video by a builder, mind) to ensure that you finish what you started and achieve the results you want too.
What should you not do when decorating?
So, what should you not do when decorating? Based on my experience (both personal and professional) the biggest errors people make when decorating take place before a single colour or item of furniture have been picked out or the very first splash of paint hits the wall.
Ultimately, it’s getting things wrong at (or even before) the planning stage that will cause many DIY decorators who start off with Barry Scott levels of enthusiasm to fail to complete the project; or in some cases, to fail to even really get started.
Avoiding the biggest mistakes people make when decorating all comes down to planning and forethought; this is probably the most important part of the whole process, and will quite possibly take you longer overall than the physical side of the project itself.
With this in mind, these are the worst decorating mistakes you can make, in no particular order:
Q. What are the worst decorating mistakes you can make at the planning stage?
A. Not setting a realistic goal and timeline for completion and so, potentially failing to finish the project at all.
How long should a decorating project take to complete? This is a really impossible question to give a fixed number of hours or length of time for, because the variables will be different for everyone.
The size of your home, what you’re starting with, how ambitious your plans are, how much time you can dedicate to it (and even if you’re planning to do it all in one go or over the course of a few weekends or more) all factor in.
You also need to account for some potential unforeseen issue/challenges; like possibly the availability/shipping time of things you need to order, how long it might take you to find and secure second hand goods or special items within budget, and the availability of any professionals you might have decided to hire in for specific tasks too. This latter can be amplified/multiplied about tenfold if you’re trying to cash in a mate’s drunken promise to help, by the way.
However, it is really important to plan how to design your interior in terms of a timeframe, how much time you can dedicate to it, how you will schedule it, and what you will do when. Factor in a margin for delays and errors of course, but try really hard to keep on track; and if you find you do stall in one area through no fault of your own, move onto something else you could be doing and go back to it later.
There are two main reasons why people’s interior design projects get abandoned halfway through; the first is because people find they hit a wall in terms of their skills and/or mess something up to the point that they can’t finish or undo it (more on this later). The second is because their momentum or enthusiasm is lost along the way.
This latter can be avoided by planning out a schedule and timeframe that’s realistic but not overly draggy, and avoiding getting distracted in the meantime.
This means that no, you cannot go to Dave’s barbecue on Sunday when you’re supposed to be fitting a new sink, unless you’re prepared to make up the time on the bank holiday Monday following it. And don’t even think of booking a fortnight in the sun while there are still no tiles up around the bath, mister.
Q. What are the worst decorating mistakes you can make in practical terms?
A. Failing to recognise and accommodate for your own limitations.
If you have the budget to hire someone in to do something you know you will struggle with or don’t have the tools for and this can’t be worked around, factor this in. Similarly, don’t assume you’re going to be able to do everything yourself just because it looked simple enough on paper, or you watched a YouTube video that made it look easy!
You might impress yourself and find new skills; but don’t assume everything will come easily to you. If a certain part of what you need to do is supported by a healthy industry of professionals and/or reputable handymen for hire offering to do it for you, there may be a reason for this, such as that it’s beyond the skillset of the average layman.
If you’re in any doubt or approaching something you’ve never done before, have a trial run, practice, and test things out first, and don’t forget that some things also need tools or equipment you may not have already, which means factoring buying, borrowing, or hiring them too.
You may also be able to rope friends with certain skills in to help you; but proceed with caution, and don’t assume that someone really is awesome at something just because they say they are!
There are some things that pretty much anyone can DIY and get right first time, with only basic tools, by following simple instructions. This includes painting a prepared wall, hanging your own blinds, putting up shelves, and constructing flat pack furniture.
(One quick note here, a person’s ability or otherwise to construct flat pack furniture stands and falls on the quality of the instructions. You can fairly assume that your Ikea and Argos, for instance, will ensure their directions are clear and simple to follow despite all the cliché jokes about them, but for lesser-known retailers, off-brand eBay purchases, or imported goods, all bets are off!)
Moving up the skillset level a little, things like wallpapering, and cutting/laying vinyl or floor tiles will be within the remit of most people too, with a little research and practice.
From there, a lot depends on you and your practical skills; some people seem to have the kind of mind and muscle memory that makes anything they turn their DIY hand to look effortless first time, but some of us have to work on these things, so manage your expectations and recognise your potential limitations when planning your project too.
Q. What are the worst decorating mistakes you can make if you live with other people?
A. Failing to involve them and take their views and preferences into account.
A surprising number of people I know have a partner whose interest in the primary party’s desire to redecorate starts and ends with the cost, and they literally don’t give a tiny rat’s ass about what their home looks like afterwards. They also see it as a huge bonus if this also means that they’re not roped in to help at all.
Most people, however, need to pay some mind to the views and preferences of their partner (and potentially, older children) in the interests of shalom bayit.
Just got back from Google? Yes, shalom bayit essentially means domestic harmony, not getting into a massive row over small things, and generally making at least a cursory effort to involve and not offend your significant other if this can be avoided.
Even if your partner is of the “I literally could not care less and all ten of those colours look identical, Barbera” persuasion, proceed with caution.
What most people mean in this situation is “I could not care less as long as the end result is something I like or don’t find offensive, and the idea that not everyone shares my taste is an alien one that I have not previously considered, but if I do find that my other half indeed has very different ideas of what ‘nice’ looks like than I do and I only learn about this after the fact, I am going to make a massive fuss about it for the next 5-10 years at a bare minimum.”
Make them agree on the big things, or get their lack of interest in the process and end result down on paper and witnessed by a lawyer if there is any chance whatsoever that failing to do so is going to come back to haunt you later on.
Oh, one tip on getting kids to agree with ideas they don’t really like – give them some leeway to make their own bedroom/some small area of space exactly as much of a car crash in design terms as they want to. This works even better if you don’t actually object to their idea but pretend you do so that you can use this as a bargaining tool to get your own design preferences for the rest of the house past them and score another vote in favour of your plan.
These are the worst decorating mistakes you can make, but there are others…
In my opinion, these are the worst decorating mistakes you can make, because making any of them will cause you problems to some degree and in some respect. Whether it be resulting in clearly shoddy work, starting the sort of argument with your other half that can run for years, or meaning that you spend the rest of your tenure in your home working around half-finished and abandoned work, any of these problems can kind of ruin your life to varying extents.
However, these aren’t the only potential issues or pitfalls you may come across along the way, and when it comes to stylistic choices and ensuring that the idea in your head translates to what you want in your room, all of this can be an absolute minefield.
My general advice then is to divide larger projects up into more manageable chunks; for instance, room by room, even if you first need to set an overall budget for the total project and do a lot of the planning for the whole thing ahead of time.
This also means your whole house won’t turn into a bombsite, and will give you some untouched or already finished rooms to use without obstruction or inconvenience; trying to live in a home that’s undergoing renovations (particularly of essential rooms like the kitchen or only bathroom) can be both impractical and somewhat disheartening.
If you’ve decorated a new home or redecorated your existing home DIY-style, I’d love to know how that went… Whether it all went exactly according to plan, on time, and with great ease (going to guess that didn’t happen for many people), if it all went spectacularly wrong and never got finished, or if you got there in the end but not quite in the way that you hoped.
Tell me more (and please share pics if you can) in the comments.
