How to Plan for Your “Southern Style Home”
The south has always been a picture of opulence, class, and rolling green fields. Movies like ‘Gone with the Wind’ brought into our attention how the plantation barons of the old days live in near palatial grandeur. Captivating with its glorious beauty and rich history.
So as a new homeowner, it would only be too understandable if you want the southern theme for your home. Either you actually have a newly acquired cozy “Lowcountry” home, or you just want to redecorate the old one is not important. You want that look, then you should have it. The problem, however, may lie when you do not know what to do to achieve it.
Like any homeowner, you want your home to show your personality while still being able to project a 
general theme that you are going for. A nice charming southern atmosphere is a good choice as any. You may stress about how you should go about making your dream southern home. Or, whether or not to hire a professional. And you may have even challenge yourself to do everything on your own then a good start is Charleston Home and Design Magazine. What you need to know is that the difference between your success or your failure in this little project depends on what you know and how you use that knowledge. It’s basically like staging a home in Charleston. Often times you can save money by hiring a home stager than you would a interior designer to help you achieve the desired look.
You need not have a degree in interior design to be able to do this. But, before you hire an interior designer who can do the job for you or embarking on the task yourself, you first need to read tips like these:
- Have the proper visuals. Knowing the look or familiarizing yourself with the physicality is probably the best advice there is when it comes to home design that favors a specific geographical theme.
Understanding the items and styles that people used in the past to decorate mixed with new world features will help you achieve this. Such as: worn down antique wood tables, benches, furniture, sweet grass, sea grass rugs, color selections, are all common to the area.
- Get to know the culture. We are a very laid back society here in the Low-country so acquaint yourself with the culture that dictates how this look must be. This is not only a very historic old world town, but also a beach community as well. Knowing how the culture of the region figure into the details of the design will help you see which can work for you or not. Like for instance, southern plantation homes have heavy draperies because they have extremely large windows that allow too much light in. So, if your home is in the city where larger buildings such as luxury condos like: The Peoples Building, Concord St Condos, Vendue Range, or Anson House might block majority of the natural sunlight, you might want to forgo the heavy drapery. It is through knowing the culture that you can understand the importance of each elements of the southern home look.
- Be goal oriented. Before setting out to do anything, make sure that you visualize in your mind your end goal, or the look you want to achieve for your home. This will be the gauge you will work around on. This way you do not go all over the place, and to help you always stay on track. We can’t have you wanting a southern look and then be motivated by an unexpected sale to buy an oriental lamp, do we?
- Canvas the materials you need. Before you go shopping, look around different place where you think you can buy the items you need. There are many inspirational stores like Celadon, Bird Hardware, & GDC that have been design staples locals have relied on for years. Find out which gives the cheaper price or which ones will be having a sale soon. Try to figure out as well which outlet would be a more credible vendor that the
others. The last thing you want is to be scammed of your budget for your dream house.
- Set the budget. It is always important to set a budget when making home decoration projects. Let’s face it, shopping has a way of making you think you can go overboard, especially if you believe you got a lot of your items on a “steal” either because they were on sale or you are good at haggling. Setting the budget will force you to prioritize and keep you from spur of the moment buys that you will more than likely regret later.
- Make the plans. Plan everything before setting the project to motion. This will give you a timeline or a sort of “to do” list to go over from time to time. A practice that will save you from disastrous mistakes along the way. You will be able to track your progress using your plans as well, which would then help you which task have been accomplished and which ones need to be hastened. This is also the stage when you decide whether or not you are going to hire a professional or you trust yourself to be on your own on this.