When you walk into a well-designed room, you know it. Everything feels cohesive and pulled together. Here are six design principles that you can use in your own home to get that look.
Conduct a room audit. Take a minute to critically look at your space and evaluate it based on emphasis, scale, balance and rhythm. To do that ask yourself the following questions:
Do I have a focal point? This could be a fireplace, piece of artwork, or grand chandelier.
What is the size of the room and are the pieces appropriately sized and scaled to the room and to each other? What is the relationship of one thing next to another?
Is there repetition of form, color, texture, shapes, or lines that help unify the space and pull the room together?
Is there equilibrium in the room? Is the visual weight of the pieces balanced?
Photo courtesy of Chloe Dominik
Layer, layer, layer. Whether you add curtain panels to your window shades, add a throw to your couch, or combine different types of lighting (ambient, task and accent), layering contributes to great design.
Consider negative (or white) space. This is the empty space around and between furnishings, artwork, lighting, etc. Every room needs some breathing room in order to function and offer visual balance.
Use the rule of three (or 5 or 7). Items arranged in odd numbers are more appealing, memorable and effective than even-numbered groupings.
Group together objects that are slightly different. When items are all the same size and look, a grouping can look boring. As you can see in the above picture all of these items have similar qualities, but are not exactly the same. Those items inside the glass are similar in color and organic quality, but are different sizes.
Know basic measurement rules. You should always defer to your gut and intuition, but there are a few rules of thumb that are helpful to follow.
Ideal distance between couch and coffee table is 18”
Art should be hung at eye level - roughly around 60” to the center
Dining chandeliers should be hung about 30-36” from table to bottom of fixture
Photo courtesy of Ballard Designs