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Interior Design & Decor
Decorating Your Home in Style
Creating a cohesive interior design for you
home isn’t that hard if you know some of the basics. In fact,
decorating your home so that all the various elements combine to
create the look you’ve always wanted can be a lot of fun.
Following are some proven tips to help you turn your house into a
designer home:
Taking the first step
As they say, let’s start at the beginning. Chances are good that
your home is a mish mash of furnishings, art, accents and
accessories that have been collected over time. To create the
perfect designer look, you want to first consider the purpose for
each room, how you want it to look, your personal tastes, features
that can and can’t be changed, and finally, the budget you have
available.
Start with the key elements
The success of a room’s design lies in the balance you create. The
basics of good design are proportion, balance, contrast, rhythm,
pattern/texture and harmony. Knowing how these elements work
together will help you design your space so that it’s not only
beautiful, but comfortable and functional as well.
Proportion
Scale is one of the most important things to consider when creating
the look of a room. A room that is proportioned correctly will feel
welcoming while an incorrectly portioned room will just feel crowded
and unfriendly. The trick is to match pieces in terms of their
scale. A large overstuffed sofa needs an equally large end table or
coffee table; otherwise, these accents simply disappear as the sofa
dwarfs them proportionally. When considering scale, look to the
other rooms in your home for furniture that may be a better fit with
the focal pieces you have in your room.
Balance
When creating balance, there’s two ways to go here. The first is
symmetrical design, where everything is perfectly balanced. With
symmetrical design, there’s roughly two of everything or items are
mirrored in the room. For instance, one chair is placed exactly
opposite another one just like it. While this creates balance, it
can also make a room look static and lacking any visual interest or
energy. Experienced designers use asymmetry to create this interest.
Objects balance well because they are judged by their visual weight,
not pairings. For instance, you may have a large sofa on one side of
the room that is balanced by two large overstuffed chairs with an
accent table in the middle and floor lamp behind. These pieces
balance the sofa visually, even though they aren’t equal in size or
shape. The design works because there is balance in the asymmetrical
layout of the furniture.
Contrast
Imagine walking into a white room with white carpet and white
furniture. Pretty boring, huh? Contrast helps draw the eye around a
room through the intelligent use of color. Bold use of colors
creates energy while the use of muted shades in complementary tones
creates calm. The more contrast you create, the easier it is for the
human eye to follow the intended design of the room, moving visually
from one space to another, guided by the use of color and contrast.
Rhythm
While creating contrast with the use of light and dark tones can be
effective, it can also create boredom. To keep the room connected,
you want to use rhythm. This means reusing specific colors,
patterns, textures or themes throughout the room. Pick a couple main
colors and repeat them in different ways in your paint scheme,
fabrics and accents.
Pattern & Texture
As the eye moves about a room, it picks up specific patterns. These
are grouped together, so a blue wall is combined with a striped
piece of fabric that has the same blue in it. Patterns that don’t
fit create conflict in the mind, compromising the appearance of the
space. Again, you want to pick one or two primary patterns or
textures and vary them within the color palette you’ve already
created for the room. Right alongside the elements of contrast and
rhythm in home decorating is pattern/texture.
Harmony
If you’ve ever heard three singers sing different parts that sound
amazing together, then you already know what harmony is. The same is
true for the harmony in your home. Different colors, different
designs and different proportions combine to create a new look that
was never there before, just as new notes are created by singers
singing three different parts. The room is suddenly complete. It has
a look that if you remove just one element, won’t have that harmonic
feel to it any longer. When you’ve achieved harmony, you’ve achieved
your design goals.
About the Author: D. Benjamin is the owner of
iapsales.com LLC - a family business specializing in HVAC products. We
are distributors of
Qmark Heaters,
electric tankless water heaters,
bathroom heaters,
patio heaters, electric heaters,
portable air
conditioners & electric towel warmers. Shop on line at
www.heateroutlet.com for these great home improvement products.
Iapsales.com LLC was established in 2003 and is the sister company to
Innovative Air Products located in historical Exeter, NH. We are a 2nd
generation manufacturers’ rep firm dedicated to providing residential &
commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment. We offer
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