It’s never an easy task decorating a room in your own home. For most of us, employing the services of an interior designer is not within the household budget, so where do you start when you’re looking to get rid of the old and bring in the new?

Amanda Grant, Director of London based Interior Design company, Distinctive Living says that you really need to detach yourself completely from the space you’ve lived in and try and look at your home with a fresh pair of eyes. “If you’re looking to completely change a room, including the furniture, décor and window coverings, you need to put emotions to the side. Ask yourself why you want to make these changes and what, ultimately, you want to achieve at the end of it?

Look at your room before you start. Make a list of what you do and what don’t like about the room at the moment. If you love the big slouchy sofa in the room then there’s no reason this has to go. Making other changes in the room, be it peeling tired wallpaper and painting the walls a neutral tone, or removing heavy curtains and replacing them with simple, stylish plantation shutters, can in themselves create quite dramatic changes to a room.

It’s a common misconception that successfully interior designing your home means you have to completely gut the space. You don’t. You can achieve quite striking and cost effective results by making small changes.”

Flooring and windows are 2 areas where you can transform a space. While carpet is making a comeback, sanding and staining your floors is a great way of creating a markedly different look at low cost. Similarly, plantation shutters, which have come down in price considerably in the past few years, give a practical, attractive and cost effective transformation for your windows.

“I’ve used plantation shutters on a number of projects that I’ve worked on. I often just use half height shutters which look stylish, give privacy and being half height are often half the cost of covering the whole window” Amanda comments.

So, with Spring approaching but budgets tight, you can take a few tentative steps yourself into creating a stunningly designed space for your home.