You've got an awkward room. Now what?

An awkward room is rarely down to a single problem. It's usually the result of five decisions made in the wrong order — or not made deliberately at all. Get the sequence right, and the room resolves itself.

1. Read the room before you plan it. Every space has an inherent flow, and a focal point — or a conspicuous lack of one. Its angles, light, and shape dictate what's functionally possible and what will read as harmonious rather than forced. This diagnosis comes before any decision about colour, layout, or furniture, and it's where most self-led renovations skip a step.

2. Decide, honestly, what the room is actually for. Not what you'd like it to be for — what it will genuinely be used for, most of the time, by whoever actually uses it. Reading, working, conversation, a board game, a cocktail party, the television. Design for the real use and the room works. Design for an imagined one, and it never quite settles, however good the individual choices are.

3. Plan the space around two things: the activity, then the journey. The layout has to serve the room's function first: ergonomics, atmosphere, and circulation. Once that's settled, every primary sightline into and around the room should land on a focal point or vignette that's inviting and says something about the room and the people in it. Lighting is what makes the plan work in practice, serving both function and atmosphere with specific intent.

4. Build colour and texture as one deliberate system within the room. Floor, walls, furniture, furnishings, accessories — primary, secondary, and accent tones — all planned together and in the right proportions, so the room reads as a coherent whole rather than a series of individually good decisions that don't quite agree with each other.

5. Select furniture with real discipline. This is where most rooms quietly fall apart. Either the colour and texture scheme bends to whatever's available on the high street, or someone sources pieces that deliver exactly what the room needs — the right scale, shape, colour, and texture, in the right place. A wide network of vendors, many of them not accessible on the high street, is what makes that possible without compromise.

This is where proportion, not style, does the real work — matching the room's own logic to how you actually live in it, which is as much a matter of maths as it is taste. It's the discipline behind every project I take on personally, from the first read of a room through to the last piece of furniture in it. In Good Proportion exists for exactly this — helping a home be unmistakably yours, through proportions that actually work, and a style that reflects your taste.