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Guided Interior Design
Rachael graduated from the British Academy for Interior Design with a distinction and loves looking at spaces and thinking how to improve them.
She is passionate about helping everyone create a beautiful, nurturing home for themselves regardless of the type of home they have or budget. So often interior design can be seen as something for people on ‘Grand Designs’ or for those who have naturally beautiful canvases to begin with. Rachael believes it is much easier to make a home look amazing when there are period features such as high ceilings, ornate coving and sash windows to work with. Rachael would love everyone to feel proud of, and nurtured by, their home even if the building is not conventionally beautiful. Rachael particularly loves creating kerb appeal and establishing a welcoming exterior that invites people in. Her greatest learning has taken place in renovating our ex-local authority house. She has learnt how to affordably add character and interest in a creative way that elevates its overall feel. Please see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of our extension below…
Rachael offers interior design consultations which consist of a 2-hour home visit and report outlining general suggestions for your home. This would include:
- Discussion of the various needs for your home. Including who lives there
- Ideas to enhance space, storage and light
- Room layouts to improve your use of your home
- General colour scheme suggestions
- Practical guidance on measuring your room and creating a furniture plan to scale
- Calculating paint and wallpaper quantities
- Contacts for local suppliers of home services E.g. upholstery, carpentry, plumbing
- Ideas for sourcing items
- A ‘Flow Living’ snack
- Option to follow up with additional sessions that are charged by the hour
Rachael offers a therapeutic sorting service using principles from Marie Kondo, Dominique Loreau and others. This service looks at hoarding and clutter with kinder more sympathetic eyes. Objects are often laden with far more emotion than we realise. People may be surrounded by things, frustrated but feel helpless to act on it.
Rachael can help to sort your objects out and signpost you to ways to store, sell, donate, repurpose, recycle or throw away your items. She can also list items on eBay and other selling platforms in return for a commission fee.
As the business unfolds, Rachael will be running ‘Interior Design for Wellbeing’ workshops. These will enable you to apply established principles to help with creating your own personal sanctuary that you feel proud of.
The workshops will include:
- Opening mini yoga sequence to establish the ‘feeling’ you want to get from your home
- Explanation of a design formula to create an effective scheme every time
- Practical guidance on measuring your room and creating a furniture plan to scale
- Calculating paint and wallpaper quantities
- Training in wellbeing for home principles (ensuring appropriate light/ temperature, including nature, resourcefulness, decluttering, storage, colour scheme, flow throughout the space, comforting textures, practical vs. aesthetic etc
- 1:1 time during the workshop to discuss your personal home project
- Contacts for local suppliers of home services E.g. upholstery, carpentry, plumbing
- Ideas for sourcing items
- A ‘Flow Living’ snack
- Reference pack
- Option to follow up with private sessions that are charged separately
Rachael was a brilliant student, very dedicated and committed. During the course, Rachael displayed great talents in drawings and creative skills and she was genuinely interested in developing her skills and challenging her abilities. Rachael is highly engaged with the creative process and it is visually evident that her works continue to grow in form, concept and content.
In closing, I would like to reiterate my strong support for Rachael’s future endeavours. Rachael is a talented designer who cares deeply about the work she creates. It was a pleasure to help and see Rachael’s progress through the course.”
Paul has helped to bring to life the design of our home and garden. Through his experience of decorating our current home in Norwich and previous home near the Peak District, he has gained a huge amount of experience in all aspects of wall and woodwork preparation and painting. He is now keen to carry out the creative ideas of others by offering a painting service for home interiors, and a garden maintenance service.
Paul is one of the trades people Rachael can personally (!) recommend. If you attend one of the workshops or buy into any of the other Flow Living services, Paul will prioritise you for getting your work booked in. Paul can assist with all of your interior woodwork and wall preparation/ painting needs plus garden maintenance work. Please contact him directly to discuss your project via: phowe2@yahoo.com or 07909 332953. Rachael will sometimes join Paul on gardening jobs and/or decorating jobs. Paul charges £30 an hour for painting and gardening. If Rachael assists, your work would be completed in half the time and therefore the total rate per hour would be double.
