14 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 want to avoid. These tips and ideas will save you time and money. 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 the size of their room and don’t measure the furniture item they’re trying to get in beforehand.
Plan out your room first. It doesn’t have to be technical computer drawing. Just drawing it out on a piece of paper is fine.
Draw out a rough room layout sketch and down your entryways, windows, radiators, and anything else that is important in the space. Make sure you write down the measurements accordingly to the right wall on your drawing.
It’s also important to measure the height of the ceiling and the height and width of the doorways. The furniture pieces still need to fit into the room!
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Doing a layout of your room as it currently, will help you see where you might need bigger or smaller items if you’re adjusting a couple of items. Or if you’re going for a new look or moving into a new home, start your plan from scratch. It doesn’t hurt to draw out two or three layouts to see which works best.
2. Too Much Clutter
A good tidy out will give you a clearer sense of what you have to work with in terms of space. As well as your functional needs and use of 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 new items, we need to sort through what we have already. Think about what you need easy access to and what can be put away without needing it for a while.

Also sorting out and clearing things will determine how much storage you need and help to streamline your things. Of course, you can display your decor and accessories. Just don’t cover every single surface. Make room for your favourite 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. You can get your paint colours matched and customized from other furnishings so easily to coordinate with your room.
It’s much easier to pick out your furniture, rugs, and patterns first and then select a colour for your walls. That way the colour will complement and match the items that you already have in the room.
4. Scale & Proportion
Scale and proportion can be tricky to get right. That’s why having a drawn plan is a good idea 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. Whereas something too big takes over and dominates the space and makes the space feel small.
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. The bigger the room the larger furniture items and furnishings are needed.
5. No Focal Point
When walking into 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, the focal point is the bed. For other rooms, you might have to create a focal point if there’s no set feature already. A living room might have a fireplace or a great window 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. It could be a media console that’s nicely styled or a drinks bar cart set up.
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6. 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 into your home thinking they’ve seen the 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 do a bit of looking around first.
And remember to look online and thrift stores for some great one-off furniture finds!
7. Hanging Your Curtains
By hanging your curtains or drapery panels to the size of the window you’re just framing your window box. You want to use the curtains to draw attention to the size of the room. By drawing your eye towards the ceiling. 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 three times the width of the window, so the draperies look full when closed and open.
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8. Hanging Your Artwork & TV
A lot of people hang their wall pieces too 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 a coffee table. The rug is too small for the space and looks out of proportion to the rest of the room.
An area rug should pull the living room seating 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 a 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 setup.
Similar design rules apply for area rugs in the bedroom.
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. 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 four types of lighting in each room. Natural lighting, ambient, task, and feature lighting.
Ambient lighting is usually your main source of light like your ceiling light in a room. A light fixture that shines light in all directions.
Task lighting is needed for when you might be working, reading, or writing. A direct light source like a desk lamp or a floor lamp is the best option for those tasks.
For other areas like the kitchen, you can use directional spotlights or light strips under your kitchen cupboards for extra lighting. Feature lighting if you have something special you want to highlight like an art piece.
Each room should always have lighting options for different times of the day, your mood, and the different tasks you’re doing.
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11. What’s Your Vision?
Often we’re ready for a change but we don’t have a clear idea of what we want. Make it clear what you would like the room to look like before starting to decorate. Are you changing the interior style of the room? Or just the layout for better spacing?
Creating a vision board is a great way to get clear and stay on track with design choices. If there’s anything you’re unsure about, refer back to your mood board. Your mood back is your room design guideline and will keep you on the straight and narrow!
Even if you can’t get the exact items you’ll have the best guideline for some alternatives.

12. Walled Furniture
What do I mean by walled furniture? When all the large furniture pieces are placed against the wall.
I often see this type of layout in the bigger living room spaces which leaves a huge hole in the middle of the room. This is a big design mistake.
Floating larger pieces of furniture away from the wall will create a better layout and an intimate setting. This way the flow of larger spaces works much better and looks better too.
13. Design Contrast
Contrast can be brought into the space in lots of different ways.
Colour contrast is an obvious way to bring interest into a room. And not only mixing design styles for interest but playing with textures rough and smooth, vintage with modern, shapes and sizes and different patterns. Without some contrast, the room will look flat and boring.
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14. Budgeting Everything
Decorating can be an expensive job, so it’s good to save on some pieces when possible—but only when needed. Getting everything on a budget may seem like a win in the short term, but it can cost you more over a longer period.
It’s important to know when to save your money and what to spend more on. Allocating more money for larger furniture pieces of better quality, such as a sofa or dining table is always a great long-term investment.
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

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