Ok! It’s a “no prompt” kind of day because I’m midway through the One Room Challenge, and things are getting… challenging lol. It’s nothing bad, just the nature of the process, so I’m going to share how I approach one design challenge: fleshing out my ideas.

Just like with the before before pics, there are many more things to the design process that are rarely seen or talked about. One of those things is idea sketches. Also referred to as concept sketches, it’s a simple process where we work through our ideas and communicate those to our teams or vendors. These are early adaptations of the final look, so they aren’t typically available to clients. It’s more of a study to determine what works and what doesn’t.

I personally love doing my sketches in 2D and focusing on the main ideas for the final look. I’ll focus on furniture placement, room circulation, storage and organization, stuff like that. I’m adding a bookshelf back in the space, so I needed to flesh out what I’m using it for and ways for it to be styled to determine a proper look and storage combination. Another thing I like to do when I sketch is use pen. It forces me to keep going without worrying about mistakes, and it gives me more freedom to play with line weights and shading when I decide to do it.

Now that you’ve seen my way of working through new ideas, what types of things do you do when you’re working through something new?