Common Interior Design Mistakes to Avoid
If you’re looking to make a house a home, ensuring you nail your interior décor is absolutely vital. Your house can look as stylish and aesthetically pleasing as you like from the outside, but if the interior just doesn’t pop and doesn’t give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, the novelty of a nice-looking house from the outside will quickly wear off.
Interior design is tough, there’s no denying that. If it was easy, interior designers would be out of a job and we’d all design and furnish the insides of our homes ourselves. Sure, you might paint your walls a nice colour, and buy a lovely looking 3-piece suite, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily wreck the interior of your home without even trying.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, here’s a look at several common interior design mistakes for you to avoid, and what to do instead.
Too much clutter
Now, everybody has their own preferences in terms of décor and interior design, but when it comes to furnishing our homes, often a ‘less is more’ approach works particularly well.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to add too many accessories and furnishings to the room you’re decorating as this can leave it looking cluttered and untidy. Ideally, purchase furniture which also provides storage, as you can have your cake and eat it too this way.
A wooden treasure chest in dark brown for example, will not only add an interesting feature to your room, but as it is a storage chest it will also give you somewhere to store items which would make the room look cluttered and untidy.
Having the wrong lighting
During the day you won’t really notice your interior lighting because, well, it’s daytime and you shouldn’t need your lights on. As it gets dark however, things are very different.
One of the most common mistakes people make when designing their interiors is choosing the wrong lighting. Ideally you should layer your lighting, which basically means that you’ll want light coming from different sources.
A reading lamp in one corner, corner lamps in the others, as well as your main light sources will create a friendly and relaxing environment without making your living room feel like a floodlit stadium.
Not varying furniture heights
Another common mistake that people make with interior design, is trying to keep everything uniform and of the same height. This is such a mistake.
Rather than choosing furniture and accessories which are all the same height and size, instead, try varying them and mixing them up.
For example, you could have a tall wide bookcase in one part of the room, along with a small and stocky coffee table in another part. This contrast in sizes not only draws the eye, it makes the room look more organic and natural, and also helps it to look bigger.
Minimalist with no patterns
If you are looking for a minimalist finish to your interior, one of the worst mistakes you can make is to keep everything neutral with no patterns.
If you have very little furniture, bare walls, and simply paint the walls a neutral colour, your room will look like some sort of science lab, or even a holding cell. You don’t want your room to look too empty, so consider at least one feature wall with patterned wallpaper, or alternatively use wall art and pictures.
Different colours, shapes, and patterns will add depth to your room and help it to stand out, without it looking cluttered or untidy.