Trying my hand at interior design

We’re in the midst of designing our dream home. Hubby and I have taken the plunge and signed with a builder. At first glance (through rose coloured lenses) it seems such an exciting and pleasurable task, personalising a home, making it yours from the concrete slab to the roof tiles. Then you get closer, and this big picture is revealed. I'm struggling to see how all the components fit together and I don’t have much confidence in my ability to visualise...

We’ve decided on the exterior, a neutral colour scheme with no tones of reds or greens because frankly, it’s not my thing. We’re planning to add colour to the front of the house by creating a garden. Although I wanted neutral colours like cream, beige and grey for the building materials, I’m quite colourful when it comes to plants. I’d love a big red cordyline, perhaps some bright green mop trees, and hubby and I are both huge fans of hedges... And see there it is, more decisions to make, more work to do!

Then there’s the interior and my oh my how I am struggling! My gorgeous husband says, “It’s ok honey, you can select the interior paint colours.” This scares the hell out of me, because with complete creative freedom I’m now incredibly paranoid that when the painting is done he’ll walk in and say “Oh my god what were you thinking?” There are a lot of things that we agree on but we can also be like chalk and cheese sometimes. Husband, for example, would like to ‘theme’ one of the rooms in the house, not so scary you say? Well how about this, he sees a four foot tall Egyptian pharaoh statue and suggests that would be a perfect start to an Egyptian themed living room. Oh no. Not if you want me to live there! It’s not that I’m against a theme, I think it would be nice, but it still does have to fit the rest of the house, doesn’t it?

I was thinking more along the lines of romanticising the bedroom. Wall lamps instead of ceiling lights, nice heavy curtains to keep it dark, maybe some candles... I haven’t yet found a wall lamp I love, but I don’t mind this one. I was also considering some low hanging pendants for either side of the bed.

I’m a simple girl... I was also thinking of something a little more elegant for the living room, maybe a chandelier, a fireplace, a sheer metallic curtain for the small window, some black and white Parisian prints on the wall and a plush rug. You see, the living room will be for relaxing and entertaining, it will not be the room scattered with children’s toys and vegemite stains, well, hopefully. I absolutely adore this chandelier, I would love to find a place for it in our new home. Which brings me to my next dilemma, colour! I’m usually the kind of person who likes to use as few colours as possible, but recently I’ve seen displays involving different colours that I wouldn’t have though would work, for example, tones of beige with white, black and brown. I think I need to start doing some hard core window shopping to figure out what I like and more importantly, what works. In the meantime, I’m open to ideas!