The key to any successful design project is to budget before you begin and track your expenses throughout. Without this necessary prep work, you may find yourself standing in your newly furnished home painfully over budget or scrambling to find receipts to items your purchased weeks ago. To help you keep your decor project under control, we’ve teamed up with designer Andrew Pike, who doesn’t take on any new project without a set budget and tracking method.
Download our decor budget tracker today, and keep reading to find out how to use it effectively and for some more tips and tricks from Andrew to make your design project as stress-free as possible.
Andrew’s Top 3 Tips:
- A contingency fund is a non-negotiable element of your design budget. Be prepared for those unexpected expenses. 15 to 20 per cent of your overall budget is a good range to be in.
- Keep track of paperwork and receipts in one place as exchanges and returns are inevitable. An easy and inexpensive way to do this is to hit up your local dollar store for a binder and plastic sheet protectors that can hold recipes by room, store, or type of purchase, depending how you prefer to organize. You can also use this binder to store business cards of vendors you come into contact with, like the great sales representative that helped you fit your blinds, or the painting company you used.
- If you see something you like, confirm you can return it and buy it then and there. It won’t be there when you come back for it.
Tracking all your purchases in detail not only helps you stay on track budget-wise, but it means that when it comes time to touch up your paint or replace an accessory down the road, you’ll have a record of where you bought everything and what colour/shade you used.