A renovation asks you to choose colours before you can see them together, in an order set by builders’ schedules. This planner works out the sequence for your project: which decisions narrow the others, which mistakes get expensive, and how long the paint can stay open.
Your plan has 12 stages. After recording what stays and planning the light, your first real colour decision is to choose the floor.
Arcs link a decision to the later ones it narrows. Select a stage to trace it.
Everything you are keeping has already been decided. Writing it down, with samples or photographs, stops the new choices being made against an imagined room.
The expensive mistake: Ordering new finishes from memory of an existing floor or brick wall, then finding that its undertone is not what you recalled.
Final judgement: before ordering
Wiring has to be positioned before plaster, tiles and cabinets close the walls. You can pick the actual lamps later, but what kind of light falls where is decided now.
The expensive mistake: Discovering after tiling that there is no task light over the worktop, so the only way to add it means surface wiring or lifting tiles.
Final judgement: before ordering
It is the largest surface in most rooms, and light bounces from it onto the walls, so its colour affects every surface above it.
Decides: flooring
Narrowed by: record what is staying
The expensive mistake: Laying a strongly warm floor after choosing cool-leaning units and greys, which then look blue or green beside it.
Final judgement: with samples together
They take the most wall area in a kitchen and have the longest lead time, so they are usually ordered before anything else can be seen in place.
Decides: cabinetry, built-in joinery, large permanent fixtures
Narrowed by: record what is staying; choose the floor
The expensive mistake: Ordering painted units before choosing the worktop, then finding every available stone leans the wrong way.
Final judgement: with samples together
Stone has the least choice and the most natural variation, so it is chosen against the cabinet door, and the wall colour is later chosen against it.
Decides: worktops, stone
Narrowed by: record what is staying; plan the light; choose the floor; choose cabinets and built-ins
The expensive mistake: Approving a stone from a small offcut. A full slab has veining and colour shifts that a sample cannot show.
Final judgement: with samples together
Tiles sit beside almost everything, and the grout changes how they read at a distance. They should be judged with the fixed items they will touch.
Decides: tiles
Narrowed by: record what is staying; plan the light; choose the floor; choose cabinets and built-ins; choose worktops or stone
The expensive mistake: Judging one tile on its own. Delivered tiles can vary in shade, and a whole wall of grid lines looks different from a single piece.
Final judgement: with samples together
Metals are small but bright. They are chosen once the large surfaces are known, because a warm or cool highlight has to suit what it sits on.
Decides: hardware and metals
Narrowed by: record what is staying; choose cabinets and built-ins; choose worktops or stone; choose tiles and grout
The expensive mistake: Buying taps, handles and shower frames separately, so that nominally matching finishes turn out to differ between makers.
Final judgement: with samples together
The colour temperature and rendering of the installed lamps are part of the colour scheme. Paint chosen under builders' lighting is being chosen under the wrong light.
Narrowed by: plan the light
The expensive mistake: Choosing paint under temporary lighting, then fitting warm lamps that move every colour in the room.
Final judgement: in place, under the final light
Paint comes in almost any colour and changes cheaply, so it is the natural place to absorb everything decided so far. Keep the final choice open until the fixed items can be seen together.
Decides: paint
Narrowed by: record what is staying; plan the light; choose the floor; choose cabinets and built-ins; choose worktops or stone; choose tiles and grout; fit the actual lamps
The expensive mistake: Buying all the paint before the worktop or tiles are in, then repainting because they changed how it looks.
Final judgement: in place, under the final light
White trim is read against the wall beside it, so it can only be judged after the wall colour is known.
Decides: trims and skirting, doors, radiators
Narrowed by: decide the walls last
The expensive mistake: Keeping a stark default white beside a warm wall, which makes the wall look dirty or the white look blue.
Final judgement: in place, under the final light
Curtains and rugs bring softness and can correct a room that came out too cool or too flat.
Decides: textiles, window treatments
Narrowed by: decide the walls last
The expensive mistake: Having made-to-measure curtains ordered before the wall has been painted.
Final judgement: in place, under the final light
They are the cheapest to change, so they should solve problems rather than be chosen in advance.
Decides: smaller furniture, art, accessories and temporary accents
Narrowed by: choose metals and hardware; decide the walls last; decide trim and ceiling; add textiles
The expensive mistake: There is rarely an expensive mistake here, which is the point of leaving it to the end.
Final judgement: in place, under the final light
Paint is available in far more colours than floors, stone or tile, and it costs far less to change. Choosing the narrowest, most expensive decision first leaves the widest and cheapest one to fit around it. Done the other way round, you search a small catalogue of stone for a match to a paint colour that could have been anything.
Colourwise guidance: a working default, not a rule. It helps because it keeps the cheapest, widest decision for last, and it has real exceptions.
Cost to change and visual area are different questions. A floor is expensive and large, so it comes early. Handles are cheap and tiny, yet a bright metal draws attention out of proportion to its size. Paint is the interesting one: among the largest surfaces in the room, and one of the cheapest to change.
Changing these means trades, disruption or demolition, so they set the terms for everything else.
Changeable, but not casually. A radiator can be repainted and a sofa replaced; neither happens on a whim.
An afternoon's work or a small purchase. These are where colour can stay undecided.
Dots show how much of the view an item usually takes up, from one to five. They are bands for comparison, not measurements.
For how specific materials behave, see materials in a renovation. Lighting has its own decisions and its own timing, covered in lighting in a renovation.
Cabinets, worktop, splashback, floor and metals, starting from whatever you already have.
Tile, grout, sanitaryware white and metal finishes in a small, reflective room.
Anchors, repeated materials and which rooms are free to differ.
Which colours meet at each doorway, and whether that junction works.
Roof, walls, windows and door, in wet weather as well as sun.
A test plan to carry out in the room, and what each failure means.
Already finished, and something looks wrong? Diagnose it before repainting.