If you weren’t born with the ability to imagine a room complete with furniture placement, wall hangings and rug and accent choices, it is something you can develop over time.
When you are designing your home, it’s easy to end up with rooms that look they belonged to anyone; you’ve followed interior design principles, but your room still doesn’t reflect you or your personality.
Think about what you want people to think and see when they walk into your home and consider what your home says about you.
Whether you are a cool, calm and collected person or someone full of life and personality, evoke that feeling into the design of your home.
You can achieve that effect in your own home with a little knowledge of basic design principles.
When getting started with your designs, there are a few interior design principals to keep in mind.
Style
The first step should be to select a style for your home interior. This will promote the design principle of unity and harmony, thinking of the entire home with a unifying theme.
It can be as simple as choosing shabby chic instead of formal or traditional instead of contemporary.
From there, you can refine it to a more specific style, such as French country, Tuscan, or modern Victorian.
Balance
In design, balance creates a feeling of equilibrium. It is all about equalising or approximating the visual weight of objects. Balance is created not just through shape, but through colour, pattern and texture as well. There are three different kinds of balance:
Symmetrical or formal: Traditional or formal spaces call for symmetrical balance where the space is evenly split into two sides that mirror each other.
For example, two chairs on either side of a coffee table can be said to be symmetrically balanced.
This kind of balance is easy to achieve as design elements are repeated on each side.
If you are not careful, this kind of balance can become monotonous and boring.
Asymmetrical or Informal: The visual weights of lines, colours, forms, and textures are balanced without exact duplication.
It is not as ordered as symmetrical balance and can be more complex and interesting. For instance, a sofa can be balanced by placing two chairs on the other side.
Radial balance is achieved when there is a central focal point with other elements radiating from it or around it.
An example would be a round dining table, with chairs arranged around it. There is a lot of repetition of form, texture, and color.
Contrast
After we decided about the type of Balance and our focal point of the room, we should think about Contrast and how to make your space interesting.
The contrast in interior design has to do with the difference of the color or luminance of objects differentiating them from each other.
Rhythm
Rhythm in design is all about creating patterns of repetition and contrast to create visual interest.
You can achieve this by using the same colour or shape at different intervals.
Its purpose is to move your eye around the room. For instance, you can establish a rhythm by using a color in the pillows, picking it up in a painting, and echoing it again in a rug. These repetitions will help carry your eye around the room.
Scale and Proportion
Scale and proportion are interconnected. Scale is the relative size of objects in a space.
Proportion is the relative size of objects which are next to each other.
Emphasis
You need a focal point in a space to draw the eye. There are some architectural spaces that have these built-in focal points like windows.
Colour is a major design element that creates emphasis in a space, like a bold color on an accent wall.
Positioning of lines can also lead the eye to a certain point in a space which you want to emphasize.
Lighting can also lead the eye to where you want it to go. Still another way to make something stand out is to put negative space around it.
By Joy Kyalo
