As a professional organizer and home stylist I can’t stress enough that you truly can’t do anything decoratively until you declutter your space. You can add beautiful things like decor and accessories but if you add them to a cluttered home they will never be able to shine. So to make your space more harmonious, declutter before you start decorating!
Once you have decluttered, where do you begin? Below are four steps to help you create a space you will love:
Step 1: Use these four design principles to conduct a room audit
Emphasis: Every room needs a focal point or emphasis. What do you notice first when you walk into the room? Where do you want to draw the eye? A focal point can be a fireplace, beautiful chandelier, piece of artwork or even a bed canopy. You don’t want to distract the eye from the focal point in the room by calling attention to a less significant feature. You don’t want your eye to be confused as to where to look.
Scale: What is the size of the room and are the pieces appropriate size and scale to the room and to each other? Scale has everything to do with the size of one thing next to another (their relationship). A tiny family room with an oversized sectional or a huge expanse of wall with one tiny picture hung in the middle of it will mess up the entire flow of the room.
Rhythm: This is the repetition of form, color, texture, shapes or lines that help unify a space. As you walk through your space and home, do you see a thread of continuity in the color, feel, style, lines and objects?
Balance: Create equilibrium in a room by balancing the pieces to unify the space. Evenly distribute the visual weight of the furniture so that no one piece overwhelms the room or makes it feel off balance. Make use of symmetrical arrangements; it doesn’t have to be matchy matchy, it just has to be visually similar.
Step 2: Find your inspiration
Even if you plan on having the help of a decorator or a home stylist, make sure to articulate your likes and the mood or tone you want for your space. My absolute favorite inspiration source, and a fabulous design search engine, is Pinterest. Houzz is another good one too. For instance if you want to refresh your bedroom, create a “bedroom” board in Pinterest. Use the search bar to look for specific features like “window seat” and “built in bookcases”, or search more generally for a style like “modern coastal”. Then start pinning and don’t edit yourself. Once you have a good collection on your board, go back and remove the images you don’t truly love. Narrow that down to 10 images that speak to you and then try to figure out which design elements they have in common (e.g. white walls, wingback chairs, jewel tone rugs, modern lines).
Step 3: Decide on a jumping off point
This is not the same thing as a focal point. Start with a crucial element in the room like a piece of artwork, rug, bedding, wallpaper you want to design around. I usually don’t include paint, since it is much easier to choose a color to match the crucial element than the other way around. Find one thing that makes your heart sing that has a pattern or multiple colors. Your other design decisions will revolve around this element.
Step 4: Pick a paint color scheme
Hopefully Steps 2 and 3 gave you some idea as to the overall feel of the space and the inspiration/starting point. An easy way to start is to choose a color palette that contains a white, a neutral, a coordinating color and a pop of color.
Below is an example of working with a blank slate. This will be somewhat different if you are working with a fixed element in the room. We chose this orange & blue rug as our jumping off point. We repeated one of the rug colors on the sofa - blue which became our coordinating color. Next we picked an accent chair in a neutral color. We then incorporated orange, our pop of color, in the accents like the throw and pillows. Check out October’s Digest for more information about choosing paint.
A sense of peace and cohesiveness is more than just the feeling that everything in the room goes together. The above design principles can help bring order to a room while still keeping it interesting and personal.