Setting Up a New Home

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning…

You and your husband are back from your honeymoon and it’s now time to create a nest.

Your first home maybe a flat or if you are lucky, an inherited bungalow in either the city suburbs or up-country in a rural setting. In years, your flat or bungalow will become your new families base.

The houses we live in Kenya today are very different from the ones our parents lived in. They are more spacious and modern with a contemporary feel to them. You want to express your own individuality in them. Marriages bring families and friends together so get ready to entertain. A lot! The atmosphere thus needs to be warm, welcoming, and soothing.

Seating in your living room or great room needs to encourage conversation to flow, surrounded by colours that harmonize with each other, lighting that show cases your carefully selected and framed pictures and artifacts creating one beautiful whole.

When you start designing and decorating your home, choose character, individualizing each space and room with things which mean something to you and your spouse, creating a successful marriage of beauty and comfort.

Use patterns that you both like, items that the two of you have collected throughout your lives and have kept for years. They could be pieces of furniture, accessories, soft furnishings, paintings, pictures, posters, lamps or books. Your individual style choices will all begin to tell a new story of your new life together and this story will be reflected throughout your new home.

You may choose to work with an interior designer or to work on your home by yourselves. To create a unified style, start by leafing through interior design magazines, books, catalogues and take note of colour schemes, items of furniture, lighting ideas, window and wall treatments that you both like,

As when you were planning your wedding, you started by creating a “colour sample board.” When designing your new home, you will also start in the same way. Keep your collections until you have about two dozen items. Lay them out either on a coffee table or on a dining room table and start to see a theme developing. Your style preference will also come through …. What is your dominating colour scheme? Do you prefer steel or wood? Is it sparsely furnished with wide open spaces or closely furnished? Now, all you need to do is make your interior design scheme happen, within budget in your own space. Designing your home is a long-term process.

Once you have enough items, start making a Master Plan and a Colour Pallet and see it grow and harmonise into every room and space in the years to come.

You can begin experimenting with pieces like pillows, throws and curtains which you can splurge on from time to time with the changing seasons. There are some pieces however, in which you will invest in considerably. These will become permanent fixtures and may be movable or immovable fittings.

One last important thing to remember is that your home is not a show case; it is a place where your friends, new family and visitors can relax and unwind in comfort.

Chose whatever pieces you decide to use wisely and they may very well see you through your entire life-time, and your children may eventually inherit them.

#newhomesetup