How to enlist London's top interior designers on the cheap to help renovate your home

Interior designers often say that enlisting their services should save you money in the long run — they are there to help you make the right decisions, unearth quality items, secure trade discounts and generally make your home a streamlined, high-functioning and pleasurable place to live for many years to come.

That said, there is no getting away from the fact that you will need thousands of pounds to access their services, funds which many people who have just blown all their cash on a home purchase do not have to spare.

Luckily for us, the experts are increasingly distilling their expertise into online courses and one-off consultations to help you on your way to decorating success.

See also: What our favourite London designers are buying for their homes?

Here are some of the best on offer in London.

Sure, you can slosh that creamy off-white all over your walls, but when you realise it’s a touch too yellow, how long can you actually live with it for? This is where the colour pros come in, saving you a potential fortune on paint samples, weeks of indecision and expensive mistakes.

Jessica Horton, founder of Deorling, has been known to come up with colour schemes sparked entirely by clients’ art. It’s a service she offers virtually (£300 for 90mins) or in-person across London for £350.

Ali Childs, the brainchild of colour-centric Studio Alexandra, offers a similar bitesize service (£360 for a one-hour video call covering two spaces, with extra rooms charged at £120).

Paint brands such as Lick and Farrow & Ball offer a similar service. Keep an eye out on the Colours of Arley Instagram for the stripe specialist’s next Wine & Colour Workshop. Call on IRL help to find their perfect bespoke combo, with the first metre free or a cushion included in the ticket price (£50).

deorling.co.uk; studioalexandra.co.uk; lick.com; farrow-ball.com; @coloursofarley

Every Sunday the interior designer and influencer Rebecca Constable opens up her Instagram to decor dilemmas from her 48k-strong following.

What she has realised is that people desperately want guidance and someone to tell them what to do, “but it’s too big a leap to hire an interior designer or too expensive to do so”, she acknowledges.

Her solution is the newly launched Room by Room library, which saves hours of endless scrolling thanks to schemes which can be instantly downloaded.

Each one costs £67 and is comprised of shoppable lists, tips for choosing rugs, lighting positioning and how to match paint and fabric colours.

Debuting with a trio of living rooms — choose between a trad English theme, laid-back luxury style or mid-century feel — bedrooms are next on her list.

roombyroomlibrary.com

Renovators tackling an entire house will want to get to the nitty-gritty of space planning, design principles, budgeting and design schedules before considering the fun stuff.

Award-winning designer Beata Heuman has distilled her wisdom into 20 lessons tackling all of the above via BBC Maestro.

A bargain at £79, there is emphasis on finding your own style and how a space lives on once completed. “If an interior functions well, gives you what you need and is beautiful it will be truly life enhancing,” says the Swede.

To get that luxurious look beloved by high net worth Londoners, Sophie Paterson is the name to know. Her online masterclass, Interior Design Mastery — From Basics to Brilliant, spans 40 lessons and room by room guidance.

It launches in June and costs £995 — giving you just enough time to save up.

bbcmaestro.com; sophiepatersonacademy.com

E-learning platform Create Academy has established itself as the destination for online learning.

Its interiors offering is comprehensive, with Rita Konig covering full-scale interior design for homeowners; clever styling ideas with Lisa Dawson and Kate Watson-Smyth, and more thematic approaches with big names such as Bunny Williams and Alidad.

But it also excels at specific crafts, such as modern upholstery with Micaela Sharp, curtain-making and decorative painting, which means you can equip yourself with a new skill and save money in the process.

Courses cost around £147 each, but a subscription (£17 per month) may be the way to go if you fancy feasting on a buffet of videos.

createacademy.com

Is it crazy to tile the bathroom ceiling pink? Sometimes you just want a professional’s honest opinion. A one-to-one consultation with a designer will spark clever ideas, unlock a problematic layout or help refine finishing touches.

Ali Childs’s online service costs £350 for one hour and clients are encouraged to send floorplans, images and Pinterest boards to maximise the time.

South London-based Beth Dadswell of Imperfect Interiors, whose own home was on Grand Designs, hosts Zoom sessions via US-based platform The Expert (£350 for 55 minutes).

“Clients often book a session with me when completely overwhelmed by the number of decisions that their builder is asking them to make on finishes, lighting layouts or paint colours.

“We can cover several rooms in one session,” says Dadswell. Sounds like tasteful hand-holding at its best.

studioalexandra.co.uk; theexpert.com