Preparing to move into your dream home and trying to figure out where to start? As an interior designer, I meet new homeowners every week in the Central Florida area.
A Seminole State College professor once told me that moving is one of the most “life traumatic” things you can do as an adult. It may seem like that however, it doesn’t have to be so stressful; in fact we can make it fun.
Yes you heard fun! Fun by using color! Colors to pack your move and a paint schedule to get you organized on your paint selection.
For starters, hire a professional interior designer to guide you and create a paint schedule. A paint schedule is a guide that shows the suggested colors in a legend format and identifies where the colors start and stop by area. Using a paint schedule will help you get accurate bids on paint labor, as well as take away some of the guess work on what colors you should paint and where to paint them. At our showroom, Florida Living Quarters, we order large memo paint swatches to help you view the colors in the space before your paint. Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore are the paint vendors that we specify because we are able to provide memo samples at no additional cost to the home owner. What does a paint schedule cost? It averages by the time that it will take to do one home visit and a showroom consultation to narrow down the colors. At FLQ, a paint schedule starts at $300, includes one local house visit, memo swatches, and a diagram called a paint schedule. That’s a brief in home consultation and two hours for paint schedule creation including an in-store work session. Starting with the paint schedule is a good way to earn trust and begin the start of a great relationship between a client and an interior designer.
I have attached a few photos of some of the traditional notes used when moving using boxes. I chuckled at a few because it is reality! Instead of writing the location on individual boxes one suggestion is to create a Color Move Schedule. For example, red duct tape for fragile items and blue tape for your son’s room, and so on…coordinate each room by color. You can find printed duct tape at local hardware stores and Target/Walmart. It’s a fun way for kids to label “their stuff.” You can eliminate the anxiety of misplacing your valuables and use a color coordinated system today! You can even match up your duct tape colors to your personality. If your daughter’s room is pale green then you can use green duct tape for her things. Some of my favorite duct tape patterns used are flames and zebra for kids. Take the floor plan of the home if you have one and tape a piece of the coordinated tape by room…by doing this you have just created a map/guide to where things belong. On moving day, hand over the schedule or guide to the movers at gorillamovers.com/, California and sit back and relax because the tools are there to not mix up the rooms if you use a fun labeling system such as a Color Move Schedule.
Moving locally in areas such Sanford, Longwood, Lake Mary or Orlando, Florida vs across the nation will have different ways of planning and coordinating your move. The Color Move Schedule will work for both, but how you move-in can be very different. At Florida Living Quarters, we create a floor plan to help our clients identify what should stay and go before they pack up their belongings. A floor plan is a drawing to scale of the 
arrangement of the rooms. Scale is an important factor on whether the item will work in your new home. For example, using large size pieces in a smaller space can make a room feel cramped and small. We use design software www.swipenclean.com/ that can draw in your exact pieces. We can also create a simulation of what the room will feel like using those items in your floor plan. Using a floor plan will help you determine what you do not need. This is especially important if you are moving across the country. “Just because it fits doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for the space.” Now breathe and take a moment to use these suggestions to make moving more fun.
Take away some of the planning process stresses by using a Color Move Guide and a Paint Schedule to eliminate confusion when moving into your new home! If it’s written and labeled in layman terms then there is less room for error. Pointing and micro managing is one less thing to have on your plate as they say- “Ain’t nobody got time for that”