Shopping online for your interior design

Shopping online for your interior design
The beautiful thing about interior design is that these days, it’s possible to do it yourself, if you have a knack for navigating Pinterest, Houzz, and other online inspirations. Recently, Sheila Bridges, a professional designer, was on a tight deadline for a project (she usually has a year to work on her projects) so she decided to approach it the way the average homeowner would. Here are some strategies she developed along the way that might help other people on a similar timeline.

Plan before you buy
Buying furnishings isn’t like clothes shopping. You can’t try out the furniture in your home first and if you decide later you don’t like it, you can’t really hang it in the back of your closet. So Bridges stressed the importance of avoiding impulse buying. Measure twice, buy once. Also have a good idea of your color scheme before you even start looking at furnishings. This will cut down on time spent wading through all those other attractive but non-matching options.

Keep track of purchases
If you’re purchasing furnishings, accessories, or artwork for an entire home, it’s important to keep track of what you’ve already bought, how much you spent, when shipments will arrive, and where you’re storing it all in the meantime. It’s a lot to handle, so writing it down or making an Excel spreadsheet can help organize your receipts and your thoughts.
Bridges also suggested, “When shopping retail—even if you’ve spent a significant sum—your only recourse [when something arrives broken] is a general customer service phone number or email address.” So make sure you unpack furniture right away to check for chips, cracks, and breakages. Companies will generally replace broken parts if the breaking occurred in transit.

Check out swatches
A danger of shopping online is that you can’t sit on the couch, you can’t feel the drapery fabric, and you can’t compare the color to what you already have in your house (and holding your computer screen up doesn’t count—different dye lots will produce different colors and your screen may have color settings that make colors appear differently than they do in person). One solution for this is ordering swatches be sent from the manufacturer. Bridges said, “Many retailers . . . understand the importance of being able to feel a sofa or drapery textile, and make swatches available. . . . It’s worth the $2 to make sure you’re getting something you want.” You can also see if there is a brick and mortar store nearby where you can go to see the product in person, even if it means a bit of a drive.

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Source: online.wsj.com/articles/point-and-click-decorating-1410969888


Tags: interior design, pinterest, houzz, online inspiration, designer, swatch, furnishings