Decorating your own home is far harder than it looks. Creating a harmonious design across different rooms can be a struggle, and between choosing the right furniture, the perfect colours, the ideal lighting and getting the proportions right, there’s plenty of room for mistakes.
Having a beautiful, comfortable home isn’t only a question of money: there are people who spend a great deal on decoration without the result being especially pleasing and, conversely, people who with less money and a well-judged selection of pieces manage to create very pleasant spaces.
We’re used to seeing all kinds of spaces and, most of the time, small adjustments and quick fixes are possible that can make a big difference to how a home looks.
Scale is the number one mistake almost everyone makes when it comes to interior design. One of the most common errors is placing lots of small pieces in a given setting, creating too much visual clutter and never giving a focal point the chance to stand out.
Other people, on the other hand, go for lots of large, bulky pieces, making the space feel small and crowded. The secret to getting scale right is finding the balance by mixing different shapes, heights and sizes.
If you have a large home, not everything you buy has to be large, and the same applies if you live in a small flat. It’s important to bear in mind that not everything we like can be used in our home. We should always measure the space and start by putting in only what’s essential. The less, the better!
It may sound contradictory, but unless you have a particularly small room, putting furniture against the walls actually makes the room feel smaller rather than larger.
It’s something many of us do automatically, without thinking, on the assumption that we’ll make better use of the space; on the contrary, it can create an awkward, empty area in the middle of the room, giving off a formal, uncomfortable feel.
We’d recommend using all the available space and strategically placing some pieces in “open” positions to make it warmer. Create interest with a few more intimate conversation areas rather than keeping everything apart. Nobody will mind if they can see the back of your sofa!
We don’t all have to be Marie Kondo, but we do have to know how to say no! It’s very common to hold on to different pieces of furniture and accessories over time. Storing family heirlooms can be awkward when we don’t know where to put them, turning them into treasure with no purpose.
In interior design it’s essential to assess objects by what they contribute to the space, their usefulness or their look. Even in kitsch decoration (characterised by a busy style and a mix of different elements) the furniture and accessories should follow a pattern and have decorative intent. Leave nothing to chance and assess which furniture and accessories you no longer like and whether they’re actually contributing to the space. Let only the useful pieces you genuinely like stay in your home.
Most people fall into the trap of hanging curtains too low, a mistake that can easily change the look of a window and/or wall. For many people it makes sense to hang a curtain pole just above the top of the window, which unfortunately makes the window look shorter and the ceiling lower.
The solution is to raise the curtain pole almost to the ceiling. Hanging curtains as high as possible makes a room look larger and the windows taller, and it will magically make the ceiling look higher too.
Wandering around showrooms full of new furniture can be fun; even so, don’t get carried away and buy everything at once in a single place, or have all the furniture from the same collection.
Doing that results in a home without personality, a space that’s merely decorated, so perfect it doesn’t even invite you to use it. How can we give a space more character? Little by little, over time. It can take years before we have the house complete and fully adapted to our personality. What matters is mixing elements and styles, and always including a personal touch: the furniture that belonged to our grandmother, or the picture we brought back from our last trip. Bring your family habits into the decoration, along with the tastes shared by the people living in the house. It’s your space; make it your own.
We hope you find it useful.
!!Lets work!!