People arrive with images of rooms they like. That is a useful starting point and it is almost never where the design comes from. The design comes from answers to a set of fairly ordinary questions.
Where does everybody actually end up?
Most houses have a room that is loved and a room that is used, and they are often not the same room. Find out which is which before deciding where the money goes. There is no sense spending it on a sitting room that everybody walks past on the way to the kitchen.
What do you apologise for?
Everybody has something they mention when people visit. The hall. The downstairs toilet. The state of the back door. It is a reliable indicator of what is genuinely bothering you, and it is usually cheaper to fix than the thing that was on the original list.
What time do you use each room?
A kitchen used at seven in the morning wants different light from one used at eight at night. A sitting room used only after dark should be designed for lamplight, which changes the colours entirely. Most rooms are lit as though they are only ever used at midday.
Who else lives here?
Children, dogs, an elderly parent visiting, somebody who works from home. Each changes the answer. A dog means the flooring decision and the boot room decision. Working from home means the sound decision, which almost nobody thinks about until the extension is built and the whole ground floor echoes.
What do you own?
Storage is designed around what actually has to go in it. Skis, a sewing machine, thirty years of photographs, a bread maker used twice a year. Designing generic storage and hoping is how you end up with a full garage.
What is not moving?
The soil pipe. The meter cupboard. The load-bearing wall. The window you are not allowed to change because the house is listed. Establishing the fixed points first means the design is built on what is true rather than on what would be ideal.
Where does the light come from?
Which way the house faces changes everything about colour. A north-facing room takes warmth badly from a cool grey and beautifully from a warm one. Choosing paint without knowing the orientation is guessing.
Why this matters
A house designed from these answers looks like it belongs to the people in it. A house designed from a mood board looks like the mood board. The pictures still matter, but they come in at the point where the plan already works.