Establishing your budget can be one of the more difficult steps in designing, yet its establishment is essential to meeting expectations and communicating clearly with your designer about furniture quality and design requirements; your budget serves to communicate how much money has been set aside for each goal.

Budgeting can be a tricky step for homeowners and clients who lack an idea of the costs involved with getting their space to “look and feel” as desired. To provide homeowners with more insight into what it costs to decorate a room, we created this blog post detailing our top budgeting tricks as well as ways to save money when conducting interior design projects.

Every project and budget are unique, without specific information regarding size of room, furniture quality/brand requirements and needed pieces/quantity required for completion, budgets cannot be generalized as “one size fits all”. Our clients frequently mix pieces from each price category when creating personalized budgets. For instance, opting for trade brand sofa while saving money by mixing retail-level chairs. Our professional interior designers specialise in mixing pieces to meet budget constraints effectively.

Establishing the cost of renovation or furnishings depends upon its value. As a general guide, we suggest allocating 7-10% of house market value for interior design expenses. This should give you enough budget for some mid-range products in your design scheme. Budget at least 25% of your house market value to cover designer-level finishes. For example, RM500,000+ for decorating and designing an entire RM2 million house with designer level features. This figure does not include construction expenses (e.g. renovation). If this seems like too much money, start small. Our experienced staff is committed to finding you the best possible deals within your budget.

Plan to Exceed Budget

While it might sound counter-intuitive, experience has taught us that most people tend to exceed their budget on average, though remaining austere spending plans still remains possible. As clients add features or upgrade finishes during design processes, their budgets tend to rise accordingly. To prevent unexpected overages (or dissatisfied clients), we advise adding 20% extra onto initial estimates when setting financial expectations. Adding this margin would provide ample room in their budget for upgrades while meeting realistic requirements, giving enough breathing room should changes and any unexpected events transpire within its parameters.

Interior Designer Budget

While interior designers should go without saying, homeowners may fail to recognize all of the advantages associated with hiring an interior designer; especially money savings. In this post we are solely discussing its effects on budgeting.

Interior designers can gain access to exclusive furnishings and finishes known as Trade Brands. These high-end furnishings, fabrics, lighting and decor products are only available through interior designers working within their “trade”, so interior designers often receive discounted wholesale pricing which makes these items even more desirable than purchasing them on an individual basis.

Interior designers utilise their experience and knowledge to value engineer your project. Value engineering involves using this experience to identify areas in which savings could occur while still meeting aesthetic quality requirements. While value engineering might sound straightforward at first; its execution can often prove more complex.

Interior designers strive to work within your budget. If all parties involved communicate openly and set reasonable expectations, interior designers will do everything to stay within that limit, only suggesting more expensive features without forcing higher spending limits.

Price Categories

Let’s cut straight to it: how much will this project and budget cost me? Every project and budget differ so in order to simplify our analysis we have created two price categories with furniture items representing various price-points.

Mid-Range

Our first category, Mid-Range, covers moderately priced retail brands offering quality purchases without long-term investments. There are furniture solutions offered at cost effective price points – making these brands perfect choices for customers searching for fashionable yet practical designs to appeal to multiple audiences. Budget options exist within every collection such as side tables or occasional chairs that provide cost savings while still fulfilling our requirements for furnishing use from this category of furnishings.

Designer-Range

Exclusive trade suppliers have long been recognized for the high level of quality & style they bring with them. Furniture in this category often provides semi-custom or fully custom solutions and even allows reupholstery should an updated appearance be desired in the future. We advise our clients to allocate more budget for furniture from this category. We also frequently receive updates from the markets on exclusive offerings by trade brands who offer directly to our clients.