Home Interior Design Checklist: Plan, Track and Stay within Budget

Updated: January 23rd, 2023

Home interior designing can be overwhelming even for seasoned professionals when it’s not managed and track properly. I have seen people make silly mistakes during home interiors, and therefore it’s important to pan, track and manage the entire home interior project carefully. Poor planning and project tracking could easily increase your over budget and delay the entire home interior project. And as I said, even the professional interior designers skip some of the crucial things at times. And therefore, I thought of preparing a detailed home interior design checklist that’ll help you to plan, prepare, and track the progress while staying within the pre-specified budget for the entire home interior work.

Needless to say, if you are planning to go for interior designing and decorating for a new home, then this home interior design checklist can help you in many ways.

And the best way to get it right is to read till the end and then download this printable checklist to manage and track your upcoming home interior design project.

Why a checklist to track home interior design project?

Wikipedia says “A checklist is a type of job aid used to reduce failure by compensating for potential limits of human memory and attention”.

And on top of that, when you have a detailed checklist, apart from helping you forget anything that could be crucial for the project, it also helps you manage and track the progress of the home interior project, and of course it helps limit your expenses to a great extent.

End to end interior designing is a comprehensive project, and it involves number of activities. And it is natural for you or the interior designer to forget or skip something that was crucial for the comfort and efficient functionality of a space.

Just imagine, you designed and decorated the entire project, took care of everything big and small, but you forgot to fix a hanger in the washroom? Does it make any difference? Yes, it does.

I have seen people forget a few of the things here and there, and that may affect the entire project like delayed completion, shooting up of budget, and then if you are in hurry to just move in, then such things get left forever. Because, we start accepting things as it is, and then it becomes part of our day to day living.

It’s very difficult to get a carpenter for one small task; usually they won’t turn-up or charge dearly.

And therefore, it’s always better to plan everything related to home interior design with a proper checklist, so that nothing get left, and you have total control over what you need, and that too without increasing your planned budget for home interior design project.

Home Interior Design Checklist

The overall idea of putting this master checklist for home interior design is to help you plan, track and stay in budget. And therefore, we’ll discuss it all here under.

Home interior designing checklist for planning

As we all know, planning is crucial to getting anything done correctly, and when it comes to vital and overwhelming projects like building a house or designing and decorating a flat, it becomes even more crucial.

First of all, asses your space, discuss the lifestyle and comfort you want within the family and then take things forward with a professional interior designer and contractor.

Here’s a checklist that should help you get started with planning for a home interior project. This checklist shall work like a scope of work document. I have enlisted most of the elements that you may need, but as I said, sometimes professionals may also skip certain things, so feel free to add/remove something that you need or don’t require.

Kitchen room interior checklist

• Kitchen cabinets and storage units
• Pantry unit
• Wall and floor tiling
• Kitchen countertop
• Storage cabinets under counter top
• Cabinets/racks for appliances e.g. chimney, water filter, dishwasher, microwave, refrigerator etc
• Serving counter, usually needed for open kitchen
• Kitchen sink a must have
• Proper lighting, decorative lights for open kitchen
• Exhaust and wall hanging fan

Master bedrooms interior checklist

• Wall fitted wardrobe
• Dresser with mirror and storage unit
• Cot with Side units and head boards (storage space optional)
• A study unit is a good to have feature in bedroom
• Book shelf near study unit
• Couch and sofa or sofa cum bed as per need and space
• Tv unit may be optional
• Bed side switch boards for light, fan, Air conditioner etc

Living cum dining room checklist

• MDF partition
• Foyer
• Crockery unit
• Shoe cabinet
• TV Unit
• Pooja Unit
• Sofa
• Center table and tables/tools
• Dining table and chairs
• Bar unit and stools

Bathrooms

• Storage rack with mirror
• Designer wash basin with or without underneath storage
• Shower partition
• Towel hangers and racks, hooks, faucets etc.
• Tiling and flooring may be optional

Electrical works

• Adding or replacing switch boards as per need
• Making extra plug point etc
• Ceiling lighting cabling
• Power points for appliances and accessories across all rooms

Painting and wallpaper

• Wall Painting
• Textures painting
• Wallpaper
• Wall cladding

False ceiling

• False ceiling in bedroom, living room, kitchen etc
• POP designer partition etc.

Civil work

• Tiling and flooring
• Adding and removing partition
• Wall alteration

Decorating and furnishing checklist

• Curtain hooks
• Curtains
• Chandelier
• Designer stand lights
• Figurine
• Installation of fan, air conditioner, geyser etc
• Main door security systems and camera

That’s the standard list. Beyond this, you may have your own unique requirements and therefore you can amend the above checklist as per your requirements and based on the available space you may have at your home.

Tracking home interior design project progress

As you can see, when you have such an exhausted checklist of things needed while doing interior designing and decorating your home, it will be easier for you to track and manage each of these.

The best way to track the progress for every item that you planned for your home interior is to track it under three categories.

For each of the items in the above checklist, add three different columns namely – structure ready, under finish, finished.

 Ideally, the interior designer and contractor will make the structure first, especially for wooden and carpentry related items. And once the structure is ready, you can tick it off.

Next stage is to do the finishing work and when the contractor starts finishing work like pasting laminates etc, you can tick the second column.

And once it is finished, and tested, you can tick of the finished column.

And when you manage and track the progress like this, your project won’t get delayed, and you will be on track, and you can move in time.

Staying within pre-defined budget

The complete home interior design projects can easily costs lakhs, and when you have no proper budget in place to design, decorate and furnish your home, you are most likely to flow with emotional buying and end up spending a lot of money.

And you may agree with me, that when you are designing your home, no matter what you will be a little biased to get the best things and accessories to decorate your home. And that’s where having a interior design checklist can be handy.

If you want to stay on course and within a specified budget, you got to be extra cautious and careful when buying things. And to do that effectively, you should allocate budget for every room, every big or small accessories to know which part is going to cost how much.

And then, when you go shopping for things related to your home interior project, you can easily stick to the budget, and as and when required, you can make small adjustment here and there. It’ll help you in budget and it works surprisingly well.

And finally, I would like to add that we don’t do home interior every now and then, as this is a onetime expense. When done right, you can easily expect it to last for 10+ years and therefore it always make sense to always use the best quality of materials when designing and decorating your home.

And if you need help with hiring professional interior designer near you, in your city, you can always use servicesutra and request for free home interior quotations. We have expert interior designers on board who offer consulting as well as turnkey interior designing services from planning to execution, according to your budget.

Summary

Home interior designing can be overwhelming as it involves a lot of tasks and plenty of money. And in between managing so many tasks like approving layouts, procuring different items, getting things reviewed, fixed and finished, you can easily forget one thing or the other here and there.

But, when you a master checklist for home interior designing project at hand, you can easily plan and prepare, review, track the progress and stay well within the pre-specified budget. I have already shared a detailed home interior checklist that should help you get it right.

And as I said, I might have forgotten something or added something that you may not require, so feel free to make adjustments as needed.

How else do you think one can plan, prepare and manage home interior project from planning to finishing stage?

Share your tips, ideas and hacks by commenting below.

Happy home interior designing!!