It's exciting to make the decision to decorate, or re-decorate a room or space in your home. But for many folks, the next step is not clear, and hiring an interior designer may not be in the budget. So the challenge is to find a way to complete your design project while keeping the stress level as low as the budget!

There are several decisions you should make at the onset of your project, and one of the most important is the color scheme for the space. Determining the color scheme before you make any purchases or other design decisions will benefit you in several ways.

Let's define what is meant by 'color scheme'. Your color scheme represents the primary and secondary colors you will be using in your design project. You should select up to three primary colors and one or two secondary colors to work with. By making this decision at the beginning of the project you will ensure consistency in your selections and purchases.

How do you go about deciding on on these colors? One of the most effective ways to make this decision is to look around your home and see what color selections you have made in the past. Walk through the rooms of your home and write down all of the colors you see. in no particular order. Now take a couple of minutes to re-write that list, organizing it into three categories: colors you really enjoy, colors that are okay, and colors you'd rather not see so much (you know, the results of those impulsive purchases of the past!).

For example, you may have used moss green, buttercup yellow and light blue in other areas of your home and put them on the list of colors you really enjoy. Those colors make you happy. Your list of 'okay' colors included light brown and navy blue. Consider the space you are going to decorate/re-decorate, and decide which of those colors you want to use. You decide to use moss green and light blue as the predominant colors for your project with accents of navy blue, buttercup yellow and deep gold.

You have added a new color, or shade, to the color scheme by the inclusion of a deep gold. It is in the yellow/brown family and will fit in quite nicely with the rest of the colors in your home.

You don't have to, and most likely don't want to use the exact same colors in every area of your home. There are some homes that use this technique very effectively, but unless you know how to accomplish it properly, your home could easily look quite uninteresting. So for most of us, using two or three primary colors throughout our home, with two or three secondary colors as accents, is the most successful way to home design.

Your design project will now have beautiful colors selected that are consistent with the colors found elsewhere in your home.