“You need to consider your own personal preferences, uses of the room, storage requirements, lighting requirements, the mood and so on. No one element is more important than another. They all have to be considered as a whole so we know they will work together.

“To separate the elements and consider them one by one would most likely require you to go back, rework and update a previously 'completed' area because it did not fit in neatly with an element considered later on. Whereas there is a degree of re-working schemes because a scheme develops, morphs and becomes more refined, by considering all the elements as we go minimises un-necessary re-working.”

Design It Yourself
There are, of course, various pieces of software you can buy with in-built tutorials which allow you to draw up your dream room either from scratch or using variations of the pre-designed floor layouts included and lets you choose from scores of finishing touch accessories. (see, for example, www.smartdraw.com, www.designsoftware.com for some free downloads).

Design is purely down to personal preference – there are no great taboos. One man’s heavenly colour scheme may be another man’s idea of hell but as long as you’re happy and the room is functional, who cares if you want wall-to-wall leopard skin?!

Pascoe says: “Although there are no hard and fast rules on how to design per se, the simple ideas are usually the most successful long term. When the design process is finished it is the client who lives with the design day in day out, so it's imperative that a client was happy with the design and that it matches their personal requirements, however quirky they may feel to the client when they initially vocalise them.”

The Deadly Design Sins >>