Setting a Realistic Decorating Budget Before You Start Spending

If you’re on my email list, you’ve seen me say (lots of times) how important it is to define a decorating budget before you start decorating a room.

Setting a realistic decorating budget is probably one of the most important (if not THE MOST important) parts of the design process. You HAVE to know how much money you have to spend before you start buying stuff. There’s a lot of people that buy a little bit at a time and then wonder where all their money went. It’s okay to break up your purchasing by spending a bit here and a little bit there, but you have to have a total budget in mind.

One of the things you need to remember when setting a budget is that no one can tell you how much to spend and that YOU and only you – know what you have.

You need to be willing to pause and really check your finances to know how much you can spend.

Imagine your finished room. Really imagine it. Put in your mind what your finished room would look like. Now, think about what you would spend to get that finished room? Would you spend $3000?

Or, would you really take the plunge and spend $10000 to achieve that look. Or, maybe you know that your finished look is going to be so fabulous and to get there you’ll spend $25,000.

Other things you should factor into your decorating budget is the size of the room, amount of new furnishings you need to get, the type of services you’ll need to hire out (Interior Designer, painters, contractors, etc.), and your desired timeline.

When you know how much you plan to spend, think about how you’re going to get that money. Do you already have it on hand? Or, do you have to save up for it? Maybe you can put $200 on the side out of every paycheck until you receive that amount. Or, you can finance your project with credit cards or loans?

What you can do is buy a little at a time. Even though your budget might be $5,000, you might not have it all at once, so you can spend $500 per month until you’ve completed your room.
Does this make sense?

In a lot of cases, after you’ve figured out a budget, you may end up realizing (later on down the line) that you have more or less than you initially thought. That’s okay. You can make adjustments down the line. But, if you start off knowing how much you have to spend, you won’t have to waste your time looking at furnishings that you can’t afford. You’ll also know up front what kind of furnishings that you CAN afford.

Even once you’ve got your budget defined, you want to make sure you don’t do any purchasing until you’ve actually gotten your design ideas together. If you want help pulling your design ideas together, you can sign up for my online decorating workshop, where I show you my step-by-step process to decorating any room in your home. I’ve switched the format of the workshop to an email course, so you’ll get each module directly to your inbox each week. You’ll also have access to videos for each module, along with the private FB group I’ve created just for workshop members.

What projects are you working on right now and are you more motivated to define your decorating budget first? Let me know below.

Till next time,

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