I'm a Serial Redecorator—Everything You Need to Know Before Starting a Renovation

Max Hurd is a Who What Wear UK Editor in Residence and London-based art director, tastemaker, interior stylist and creative consultant. A collaborator and advisor to leading luxury brands including Manolo Blahnik, Farfetch, Asprey, Cartier, H&M and Patrón Tequila, his exuberant aesthetic—which he describes as "Oscar Wilde meets Marie-Antoinette by way of a Brazilian bordello"—enables him to curate, write and create across interiors and culture.

Starting anything is hard. Take writing, for instance; staring at a blank page can feel a bit like staring into the void. All too often, the endless possibilities end before they can even become possibilities. It is truly remarkable how much I can get done in a day to avoid the sheer horror of confronting the blank white page. Procrastination has actually become a way of tricking myself into completing other tasks I have been putting off. All I have to do is open up a Word doc, and boom: within minutes, I am away from my desk and folding last week's laundry.

The same can be true for decorating. The very idea of starting a renovation, no matter how small, can be so daunting that all too often, the "temporary" sofa or the "just for now" blinds hang around much longer than you had initially planned. Before you know it, "just for now" becomes forever.

That's not to say you shouldn’t take your time when it comes to decorating. In fact, I would encourage you to do so. Rushed decision-making invariably leads to unnecessarily expensive regrets. However, you should not let the fear of getting it wrong get in the way of creating somewhere special for you to live. So, where to begin?

How to Renovate Like a Pro, According to an Interiors Expert

1. Sharing Is Caring

Firstly, get excited! Be it a full-blown, rip-out-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink bonanza or a simple paint job, flip the fear into fun. If you can, draft in some trusted advisors. It doesn’t have to be a formal working arrangement, but talk to friends and bounce ideas off people whose taste you trust. Get proactive and even start a WhatsApp group with like-minded people you know, where you can all share ideas for renovations, both realistic and highly delusional.

I have a group chat called Reno & Brunch Divas (I know, just don’t—even creatives' creativity has limits) in which two friends and I go back and forth with increasingly outrageous decorative schemes. Some, thankfully, will never see the light of day, but some ideas have, and others will very soon. The accountability of actually presenting your ideas to people and having them either encourage or discourage is invaluable in itself.

2. Send Yourself a Save the Date

Set yourself a date to work towards, a date by which whatever project you are working on has to be done by. Now, the trick here is that it cannot just be a random date you’ve plucked out of thin air; there has to be a reason for it. In my case, I was having the house photographed for a magazine, so it was a frantic Manolo-Blahnik-slipper-to-the-pedal to get it ready for its close-up.

Admittedly, that's a very specific reason, but are you hosting a big family gathering one Sunday? Is your birthday coming up? Are you having friends over for a housewarming? Much like the WhatsApp group to keep you on track, setting a date by which the project "needs" to be done means you can't keep putting it off. The good news is that once you start, you have something to finish for. So find a reason, and get planning.

3. Invest in the Best or You’ll Never Rest

Now for the practical parts. Firstly, brace yourself for the financial impact. If you are doing a full-scale renovation, it's worth getting it right the first time, and to guarantee getting it right, sometimes, you need to spend. Cutting corners may get you to the end faster, but all that happens is you have to go back later and deal with the mess you dodged. Something I have told friends and clients (and myself late at night, rocking in bed, processing the horror of my expenditure) is that for most people, your home is your biggest asset. And like all assets, in order to grow, they need to be looked after properly.

Moving money from the bank into the bricks and mortar of your home adds value to the property, kind of like adding money from your savings into an investment fund. So, whilst the initial quote may look terrifying, you’re not just spending money, you're investing it. It's just that in this case, you can actually live in and enjoy your cumulative interest. (I can imagine my accountant pulling out his hair reading this.) Once you have allocated the budget—and I would advise you to go into any project with a number in mind—add 10%. Then, it's time for the fun to begin.

4. Map It Out (and Don’t Be Sample-Shy!)

The question I probably get asked the most is, "How do I decorate with colour?" The answer I give every time is simple: Be bold with your samples. Diddy-widdly, perfectly painted squares offer no true sense of what the room will actually look like when it is done, so go big, and then live with those samples for at least a week, making sure to notice how the light affects the colour throughout the day, and how the colours interact from room to room.

I often find that the most successful colours in my projects are the ones I least suspected would work from the tin, but shone when I plastered them on the wall. Colour often needs space to breathe, to show you what it can do, and that can't happen in a microscopic square. For a really easy visual tool, create a document with all the fabrics and paint colours you want to use lined up next to each other in the order you want them to appear in the house. It allows you to "walk" through the house as a whole.

Remember that each room is an individual chapter in an overarching story, and the best stories are ones in which every chapter directly contributes to the plot. Rooms need to work together, and the best way to ensure that is to create a physical colour and textural map. Starting is often the hardest part, but in my experience, ending is sometimes even harder. Once you catch the reno bug, it's hard to shake, and once you train your eye to look for improvements, it's important to enjoy what you have already created, without constantly looking for elements to improve.