10 Interior Design Mistakes And How To Fix Them
When it comes to decorating and designing your home there are some common interior design mistakes that you’ll definitely want to avoid when getting ready to do your space. Here are the most common interior design mistakes around the home and how to fix them!
Interior Design Mistakes
1. Not Measuring The Space
Not measuring your room! This might seem obvious, but it’s surprising how many people guess or estimate the size of their room or the furniture item that they’re trying to get in.
Plan out your room first. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just a drawing it out on a piece of paper is fine. Draw out a rough room layout sketch and down your entry ways, windows, radiators and anything else that has an impact on the space. Make sure you write down the measurements accordingly to the right wall on your drawing.
Measuring your ceiling height and the height and the width of the doorways is important too. The furniture pieces still need to get into the room!
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Doing a layout of the your room as it currently is if you have furniture already will help you see in where you can might need bigger or smaller items if you’re keeping the layout the same. Or if you’re going for a totally new look or moving into a new home, start your plan from scratch.
2. Too Much Clutter
A good tidy out will help you give you a much clearer sense of what you have to work with in terms of space. As well as your functional needs and use out the space. A lot of us just rush into filling a space with more things without evaluating what we already have.
Many times we think that buying something new will immediately make the room look better. When often instead of a new items it’s a need to sort through what we have already. Think what you need easy access to and what can be put away without needing it for a while.
Also getting sorting out and clearing things will determine how much storage you need and help to streamline your things. Of course put out your decor and accessories just don’t cover every single surface. Make room for your favourites pieces to be on display.
3. Picking Your Paint Colour
Picking your paint colour should actually be one of the last things to do when decorating a room. There are so many colours and paints can be customized so easily to co-ordinate with your room.
It’s so much easier to pick out your furniture, rugs and patterns first and then select a colour for your walls. That way the colour will compliment and match the items that you already have in the room.
3. Scale & Proportion
Scale and proportion can be tricky to get right. That’s why having a drawn plan is so important to begin with to determine your furniture layout.
Scale relates to the size of the room you’re decorating. A piece of furniture that is too small will get lost in the room. Where as something too big takes over the space.
Both of these examples would be the wrong scale for the room. Proportion refers to the shape of an item and how that object relates to other objects and furniture in the room.
The general rule of thumb to avoid design mistakes in scale and proportion is the bigger the room the more it can handle. Larger items in furniture and larger furnishings.
Scale and proportion is used when relating to pattern and prints. Typically the smaller the room large scale prints should used sparingly while small patterns compliment the scale for a smaller space better.
4. No Focal Point
When walking in to a room there should be a focal point for the eye to land on instead of scanning a room where nothing in particular stands out.
For the bedroom it’s easy, the focal point in the bed. For other rooms you might have to create a focal point if there’s no set feature there already. A living room might have a fire place or great view so naturally that would be your focal point.
If you don’t have a focal point create one. This might be a big piece of artwork or a gallery wall. Maybe a media console that’s nicely styled or a drinks bar cart set up.
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5. Matching Furniture
Buying a matching furniture set might seem like the easiest option but it’s likely to get dated fast. Mixing up furniture pieces and decor adds interest and personality to your space. You don’t want friends stepping in to your home thinking they’ve seen exact room layout before…
It should look like you live there!
It’s also another reason why you shouldn’t feel like you have to rush to finish the room. Shopping from different places may take longer but once the room comes together it’s so worth it! So a do a bit of looking around first. And remember to look online and thrift store for some great one off furniture finds!
6. Hanging Your Curtains
By hanging you curtains or drapery panels to the size of the window you’re just framing your window box. You want to draw the attention to the size of the room. Even if it isn’t a big room, hanging your drapery right can make the room seem bigger.
That’s why you hang the drapery panels as high to the ceiling as possible. Ideally 3 to 4 inches away from the top ceiling to the rod centre. When you hang the rod higher it draws your eye up and creates an illusion of a larger space.
Don’t forget to leave enough space for the finials (the decorative piece at the end of the rod). And the width of the drapery panel should be about 3 times the width of the window, so the draperies look full when closed and open.
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7. Hanging Your Artwork & TV
A lot of people hang their wall pieces to high or too low. The television and your artwork are supposed to be viewed easily by people, so you should hang them at eye level position for a comfortable viewing position.
The general rule of thumb is 60-65″ from the centre of the tv or the artwork to the floor. You might have to adjust a couple of inches or so depending on where it’s located.
9. The Right Size Area Rug
An area rug helps define the space in a room. It grounds the area of what would be otherwise floating furniture.Don’t use an area rug to define just one item, like just a coffee table. It’s too small.
An area rug should pull the seating living arrangement together. If the rug stops just short of the sofa the size is still too small.
Make sure that the area rug is large enough to fit all of your furniture on the rug. Even if larger item like your sofa can’t fit completely on the rug, the rug should be a few inches underneath the sofa. The sofa is still grounded and is included in the set up.
10. Lighting
Getting the lighting wrong is common when it comes to interior design mistakes. A room should always have more than one light source available. Also preferably the lighting should be on dimmers to adjust the lighting easily according to the time of day or night and whatever task you’re doing.
But if you’re not able to have adjustable lighting there should be about 3 types of lighting in each room. Ambient, task and feature lighting.
Ambient lighting is usually you main source of light like your ceiling light in a room. A light fixture that shines light in all directions.
Task lighting this when you might be working, reading or writing. So a direct light source like a desk lamp or under lighting for you need to use your kitchen counter tops. Feature lighting if you have something special you want to highlight like an art piece. Your room should always have options for different times of the day, your mood and for the different tasks you’re doing.
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Ok! So those are the most common interior design mistakes that are seen around the home. I hope those tips and solutions help you in whatever space you’re decorating!
Chloe
Featured Source Image: Unsplash
