The Whole Design Process, Pt. 2

We talked a last week of getting down to the essence of a building. This is a critical first step.

But what about the whole process? Here's roughly what I do as when approaching a new project.

vision

You got hired or you hired yourself because you have a unique aesthetic vision to bring to the project.

Let's get points on the mood board. What could it be?

Look to hospitality. Look to homes in other countries. Look at your friend's excellent renovation or the open house in your neighborhood.

It's really funny, but in many cases, the way to make something feel edgy and fresh is to find things they did decades ago in design and update them for today. That 1988 issue of Architectural Digest is calling you.

Life changed for me when I realized Kelly Wearstler is just remixing Josef Hoffman & Vienna Secession.

The aim here is to give yourself and your client something to get excited about.

It's important to remember that energy is a currency that can be spent and depleted. And spent it will get. These are big and long projects.

So upfront, it's important to craft an energetic vision of what it could be. You discuss the things you really want, desires and non-negotiables.

This glimpse into the future pulls you through and towards the end of the project during the moments that seem frustrating and slow.

Just having a few curated pictures of some other spaces you really like is often enough.

You could base a redesign of a whole project off of two pictures.

establish a budget

I love budgets. Why? Because they provide constraints on a project. If you have an unlimited budget, you can do anything and have unlimited options.

I love the creativity that comes from innovation through a tight budget.

I also came into the design world from the land of rental properties, short term rentals, and new construction. My incentive has always been to keep costs low.

Why should that change just cause I'm not paying for it?

Sometimes clients have an exact number, often they don't. When they don't, I've got old selections sheets I can show them that give an idea of total furnishing cost.

It's harder with renovations. I can ballpark things.

But if you can simply tease out of the client whether they want to spend single digit thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, you'll at least have a place to start.

focal points, anchors, and general theme

You want to nail down what the key elements are in each room quickly. Your client probably has a good idea of what this is.

While most designers go right to floor plans here, I do it a little differently. I want to establish a vision that contains a few key features, colors, and focal points right away.

That way, as I'm walking through the room in my mind, I can picture what it is supposed to feel like. I know what the main thing is.

So we make a very rough collage. It establishes basic features of the main spaces.

It starts to create a theme with a few colors and materials. It's usually as simple as something like this:

It's gonna get tweaked, beat up and changed.

But I'm a hyper visual guy and I need to have a picture in my mind of what I'm working towards.

then we move on to floor plans

Floor plans = flow. You want to move spaciously and gracefully through a space.

Floor plans are really about two things:

Sightlines & Walkways

So we first think about what we want to see as we walk through the house. Do you want to see the kitchen from the front door? Do we want to emphasize views out of windows?

Or do you want things a little more closed and dedicated and formal? In many old homes, there is a central hallway off of which are many small rooms.

Radical difference than homes of today. Not right or wrong, but what do you want?

We also need access to those rooms we want to see, and those are the Walkways

I've found 38" or more to be a really nice comfortable number. If you could design a whole home with 38"+ walkways in and out of every room, you'd be in good shape.

So in a dining room, that means you maintain this clearance around the whole dining table. And around the perimeter of the furnished portion of the living room. And through the kitchen. And on the sides of the beds. You get it.

When you do this, it reallllly starts to firm up where everything has to go.

I've been using a floor planning software called Smart Draw, and I think it's great.

This is all I've got for today, we'll do part 2 next week.