If you recently purchased a home in Summit at Orchard Hills in Irvine, congratulations—it’s a beautiful new community with incredible views and impressive architecture. As a Southern California interior designer, I know how exciting—and overwhelming—designing and furnishing a brand-new home can feel.
Summit at Orchard Hills includes three luxury home collections: Crestview by Shea Homes, Skyline by Toll Brothers and Pinnacle by Toll Brothers. Each offers distinctive floor plans and architectural details, along with the opportunity to create a home that feels personal to you.
With so many rooms and design decisions to consider, it’s easy to second-guess furniture selections or make individual choices that don’t quite come together. Here are five smart starting points to help you approach your new home with confidence and create an intentional, cohesive design.
1. Plan Your Window Coverings Early
Window coverings are one of the first things to consider when moving into a new home. They provide privacy and light control, but they also have a significant effect on how each room looks and feels.
Start by thinking about what each space needs. Roman shades can bring softness and a tailored look to a room, while woven shades add warmth and natural texture. Cellular shades offer a clean, minimal appearance along with practical light control and insulation. Curtains can be used on their own or layered over shades to add height, softness and a more finished look.
You don’t need to use the same window covering in every room, but the materials, colors and overall style should relate to one another. Planning them together helps your home feel cohesive and prevents you from making rushed, room-by-room decisions after moving in.
2. Create a Space Plan Before Buying Furniture
The expansive rooms and open layouts at Summit at Orchard Hills offer plenty of possibilities, but larger spaces still require thoughtful planning. Before purchasing furniture, create a layout that considers how you will move through the room, where the main focal point should be and how the space will actually be used.
A space plan can also help define separate areas within an open-concept layout while maintaining a natural connection between them. Making these decisions first gives you a clear framework for every furniture purchase that follows.
3. Source Furniture in the Right Sizes
Finding furniture you like is only part of the process. The scale of each piece needs to suit the room, the layout and the other furniture around it.
Furniture that is too small can feel lost in a spacious room, while oversized pieces can interrupt walkways or make the arrangement feel crowded. Pay attention to dimensions rather than relying on how a piece appears online or in a showroom. The right-size sofa, dining table, rug and accent pieces will make the architecture feel balanced and help the room come together naturally.
4. Add Layers of Accent Lighting
Even with plenty of recessed lighting, a room can feel flat or unfinished without additional sources of light. Accent lighting creates warmth, highlights architectural details and makes a home feel more inviting in the evening.
Use a combination of table lamps, floor lamps, sconces, picture lights and decorative fixtures to create layers throughout your home. These pieces also provide an opportunity to introduce character through shape, finish and material without making major changes to the home’s existing finishes.
5. Think About the Home as a Whole
It’s natural to focus on one room at a time, but each space should still feel connected to the rest of the home. That doesn’t mean every room needs to match. Instead, look for opportunities to repeat certain colors, wood tones, metals, materials or design details from one space to another.
Creating an overall direction before you begin buying helps prevent a collection of individual rooms that don’t quite relate to one another. The goal is a home that feels cohesive and intentional while still allowing each room to have its own purpose and personality.
Create a Home That Feels Thoughtfully Designed
A beautiful new home gives you an incredible starting point—but it’s the decisions you make after moving in that determine whether it feels truly finished and personal to you.
As an Irvine interior designer, I can help you create a clear design direction for your Summit at Orchard Hills home, from selecting paint colors that complement the existing finishes to planning furniture layouts that make the most of each room. I can also source properly scaled furniture, help you choose custom window coverings and add the lighting, artwork and finishing touches that bring everything together.
More importantly, these decisions won’t be made in isolation. Every recommendation is considered as part of the larger design so that your colors, materials, furniture and finishes relate to one another throughout the home. The result is a space that feels intentional, cohesive and designed specifically for the way you live.
Whether you need help furnishing one room or creating a plan for several spaces, we can begin by talking about your home, what you need and where you’re feeling unsure.