Our last home was 1100sqft, with some interesting floor plan choices that made some of that space not super useable. Our new home is 2300sqft, with an additional 400sqft bonus room and 200sqft of storage.

We’re not exactly decorating our new house from scratch, but there are a lot of new spaces in our home that are being furnished from scratch. I started imagining layouts and interiors before we even put an offer on the house and am now months into the designing process, so I thought I would outline my process and show you how to decorate your home from scratch, too.

Consider How You Want to Live in the Space

The very first thing you need to do is picture your life in the house, and what sort of spaces you’re looking for. Is entertaining important to you? Do you want to prioritize dining and seating spaces? Do you see yourself reading a book in front of a fireplace? Sipping coffee at a cafe table in a breakfast nook? Lounging on a pit sofa having movie nights with the fam? Kneeling around the coffee table playing board games? Do you need spaces for kids to play? Spaces for work and study?

Decide what’s important to you and what you want to make space for, so that you know what to prioritize in your design.

Look into Different Ways to Lay Out Your Spaces

Before buying furniture for a space, look into different ways to lay out spaces. There are so many different ways to arrange the same space, with different types of furniture.

Here are some floor plans for different types of rooms:

However, you can also study layouts by looking at pictures of different rooms:

Look Into Some Design Basics

This blog post isn’t going to try to turn you into an interior designer, but here’s some essential information that will help you decorate and furnish your home.

Here’s how to choose the right:

And here’s some advice on color:

Figure Out Your Style

Modern farmhouse, cottagecore, mid-century modern, traditional, coastal, there are a lot of different decorating styles out there. Your personal style may not fit one of these exactly, but when looking for furniture ideas and decorating inspiration, it’s useful to use these terms to find items you like that will look good together.

Before starting to design your home’s spaces, try to find a name for a style that most matches your tastes. Then, when you’re looking around for items you can use that in searches, ex. modern farmhouse dining table or mid century modern lamp.

Here are some links to lists and definitions of some popular design styles:

Make an Inspiration Board for Each Room

Once you’ve figured out a style, make a mood board with some rooms you’d like to emulate. You can use style terms to look for inspiration images in online magazines and on websites like Pinterest or apps like Instagram and TikTok. I highly recommend using Pinterest because once you start saving images, the learning algorithm will eventually start showing you ideas you never would have thought to ask for, but are exactly what you want.

Make a Product Board for Each Room

Once you have a couple of different inspiration images and have a rough idea of what you want your room to look like, look at furniture pieces/styles that these rooms have in common: do they all have olive green sofas? are round dining tables features? Do two of them have the exact same rattan-accent nightstand?

Use the room layout ideas to figure out what pieces of furniture your rooms will require. Try to locate some big furniture pieces (sofas, dining tables, bed frames, rugs, curtains) reminiscent of pieces in those rooms. The items you choose for your product boards can be pieces in your budget that you’d like to consider buying or pieces outside of your budget that you plan on either searching for a dupe for or DIYing a dupe for later.

Use tools like Google Lens to help you find both exact matches and similar versions of furniture pieces you really like!

Use a tool like Canva to make a collage of all of your picks. You can even roughly lay them out into how they will fit into the room. Include items you’ll already be bringing into the room into these collages to make sure everything looks good together.

Once your have a product board for each room, look at all of the collages together to make sure everything works together.

Select Your Furniture

Use your product board to start searching for furniture that fits both your budget and your space.

Once you make your selections, I recommend using a spreadsheet to track the type of furniture you want for each space, links to a couple of options you’re interested in for different pieces and—this is unfortunate but—signing up for newsletters for stores you’re pretty sure you’ll be buying from. You’ll want to know about each and every deal. I managed to save $1000 on our sofa by hitting a store’s big 4th of July weekend sale.

Styling Your Furniture & Walls

Once you’ve figured out which major furniture pieces you’ll be shopping for, your last big step in decorating your home will be looking into styling.

Here’s advice on styling various pieces of furniture:

Here’s some advice on how to hang art and some gallery wall ideas.

Tips for Budgeting

Finally, some tips on budgeting:

Create a whole house budget before you start shopping.
Plan for the whole room, but only buy the essential items first.
Keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace and thrift stores.
Sign up for stores’ newsletters to catch sales. (We were able to catch both 4th of July and Prime Day deals, which saved us a sizable chunk of money.)
Use Google Lens and Pinterest to find dupes foe more expensive products.
Try shopping Ebay for coupons and gift cards.
Keep a list of a couple of options for each piece of furniture you need. It’ll double your chance of sales. It’ll also give you some wriggle room if you want to compromise on one piece to splurge on another.

Julia