Six Things Helping Me Through Renovation Decision Fatigue

I woke up the other morning, sat down at my desk, and felt something I can only describe as complete overwhelm.

I've got two full renovation projects running at the moment. Not client projects. My own. I'm currently living between two building sites, which is its own kind of chaos, but that's not what got me that morning.

It was realising just how many decisions I still have to make around the fixtures, fittings and materials that are going to become a permanent part of both of these homes. And I really want to get that right. These aren't cushions or rugs or things you can swap out in a year if you change your mind. These are the choices that get baked into a renovation. Expensive to change later. Things I'll be living with for years.

It's an incredible opportunity to be renovating both of these properties, and I don't take that for granted for a second. But because it's such an opportunity, I don't want to make decisions that are just good enough. I see that happen all the time, with clients and with people I love. It happened with my daughter recently during her kitchen renovation. She started out really caring about every choice, and by the end she was just saying "that'll do, I don't care anymore, I'm over this." It's sad to watch, because she'll be living with those decisions for a long time.

And here's the thing: a good decision doesn't necessarily cost more than a poor one. Arguably you get better value from the good one. So I want every decision on these projects to be a proper decision. Not rushed. Not delegated to the builder. Not "what do you think looks nice" to whoever's behind the counter in the showroom. Mine to make, properly.

But when I actually sit down and think about the sheer number of decisions ahead of me, some obvious, some the kind you'd never think of until they're suddenly urgent because the builder needs an answer today, it's a lot. I understand completely now why decision fatigue is one of the things clients talk about most. The builder's on site saying "I need you to decide on this, and this, and this, and I need it by tomorrow," and it stacks up fast.

Normally my job is to take that overwhelm away from clients. I hand them a shortlist of things I'd recommend, and all they have to do is point and say "that one, please." In a way, I wish someone did that for me. But honestly, I don't want them to. I want to make these choices myself.

So instead, I took a minute and asked myself what's actually helping me get through this. And I thought it might be useful to share it, in case you're in the middle of your own renovation and feeling the exact same way.

A master spreadsheet

This is something I build for every client project. One enormous spreadsheet with literally every item a renovation needs listed out, room by room, down to the bottle trap and the sink waste and the door handles. Nothing gets forgotten because nothing is left off the list.

I took my own master spreadsheet, stripped out the rooms that don't apply, and added what does. Just having that complete container in front of me made an enormous difference. My brain no longer has to hold "have I forgotten something." The list already has.

An overall project vision

Not a Pinterest board. I mean an actual, single-minded vision for where the whole project is heading.

Pinterest boards and inspiration folders are broad by nature, and broad can tip into confusing fast. The job of a project vision is to take all of that scattered inspiration and turn it into one clear direction. For my London property, mine is a gallery-workshop feel, written down in a document I go back to constantly.

Having it in writing means every decision becomes a simple test: does this item pull towards the vision, or away from it? When I'm torn between two or three options, that question makes the choice for me. Sometimes it means picking something I'm not head over heels for on its own, because it's the thing that serves the bigger picture.

Collected samples

I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a sample obsessive. There's nothing better than samples arriving in the post. Over the years of pulling samples for clients, I've quietly kept back the ones I fell in love with for myself.

Samples matter because a screen lies to you sometimes. Something can look incredible online and be a real letdown in person, and the opposite happens just as often. Having real materials in hand at the point of decision changes everything.

A project scrapbook

I've kept a live scrapbook running since the moment I found this house. Anything that catches my eye goes straight in, a light switch, a whole room, a kitchen style, a clever way to hide the loo roll or deal with recycling. It's not just aesthetics. It's every small useful idea, all in one place.

I always save a live link back to the original source. It sounds like a small habit, but it saves so much time later. I used to cut things out of magazines and lose the source entirely. Now I can always trace it back. I go into this scrapbook daily, and I'm still adding to it now.

Detailed room designs

Especially for kitchens and bathrooms. It's genuinely difficult to specify final fixtures and finishes without knowing the exact detailed design of the room first.

One of my bathrooms is tiny, and the only way to make it work is a very long, narrow, linear basin. I need the precise dimensions before I can even start looking, because a generic search for "basins I like" would be endless and mostly useless. The detail comes first, then the choice.

A preferred supplier list

After years of buying for myself and for clients, I've built up a shortlist of go-to suppliers for tiles, bathrooms, worktops and surfaces. Suppliers I trust, whose quality and style I already know.

Going to the open market for everything would be its own kind of overwhelming, endless choice with no filter. For the more unusual items, like that long thin basin, a broader search is unavoidable. But for the everyday specification decisions, starting with a trusted shortlist cuts the noise immediately.

So that's what's getting me through it. A complete master list so nothing slips through. A project vision acting as the North Star. Samples I can touch. A scrapbook of stimulus to draw from. Detailed designs that make the specifics possible. And a supplier list that narrows the field before I even start looking.

Once I put words to all of this, I felt noticeably calmer about the mountain of decisions still ahead of me. If you're in the middle of your own renovation and feeling the same overwhelm, and you don't want to land on decisions you'll end up regretting, I hope some of these help you too.