When you are shopping and see a beautiful home decor accessory, you immediately imagine that accessory in your living room or bedroom. Right? It happens to most of us.
And sometimes we give in to this impulse only to discover later that what looked an ideal accessory looks hideous when put in place. And to be clear, this impulse isn’t something that untrained eyes feel. Even seasoned Interior Designers can have this impulse. What most of us don’t understand is that interior design takes a very keen and knowledgeable eye. We may be out shopping and see something we love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will look perfect in our home. Interior designers understand how color, lighting, room size, scale, and placement all affect how items look in a room and dictates whether they will make or break a room design.
There are a lot of common mistakes that almost everyone makes when designing their interiors. In this post by Brickell Avenue Interior Designer firm MsME Interior Design, we look at the 10 most common mistakes and how to avoid making them:
Your homes should respect your client’s personality and not yours
This is one of the most common mistakes made by the Interior Designers. Instead of understanding the personality of their client, they try to impose their own personalities in the final design. The home of a person should speak to who he is; it should be like a personal memoir of his trips, his loves, his life. There is nothing worse than walking into a person’s home to be greeted by furniture and wall paint that doesn’t reflect the personality of the person living in that home.
The designers should strive for bringing in all the things their clients love, making their home a unique oasis that welcomes them at the end of a hard day, and also tells an intriguing story to their visitors.
Scaling is the key
When a person enters into a room, it should be like a city scape i.e. a combination of different heights. Everything in a room should be of different heights or sizes. This can be achieved this with different heights/sizes in the furnishings, art placement along with window treatments.
Scale is the number one mistake that almost everyone makes when it comes to interior design. It takes a talented eye to decorate a room with impeccable scale. Some people put too many small things in a room, thereby cluttering the room and not giving the eye a place to land.
While others put too many large items in a room, making it look stuffed and small. The key to proper scale is a mixture of different shapes, heights, and sizes.
Arrangement of Collections
What could start with one little ceramic animal, the owner of the house can have a collection of animals in various shapes sizes and colors amassed over the years. As an Interior designer, it should be your job to tell the owner the proper way to display a collection such as this.
Scattering pieces of the collection throughout the home is the worst mistake one can make.
No matter what the accessory is, it is always better to display them in arrangements. Therefore, gather the things the owner love into groupings and display them properly.
Always Budget Before Buying
It’s not that you shouldn’t buy something that you fall in love with, but it is always advisable to keep the receipt in case it doesn’t work the way you had originally thought.
For example, before heading to a furniture showroom, it’s good to have a plan and a budget well-established. Your rooms need to be properly measured. The furniture placement and size need be planned properly. Also, go into a showroom with a proper plan in place, and make sure you stick within your budget. “Plan first and shop later” should be the mantra.
Fabrics and Textiles should be bought First
Instead of choosing the paint color first, you need to pick out the rooms fabrics and main textiles first, such as curtains and rugs.
This is simply because it is much easier to find fabrics that we love and then pick out paint to match. Once we paint the wall, finding a fabric to match the wall color can get a bit difficult.
Therefore, with a budget and room size in mind, go for a shopping excursion. Go through samples of fabrics, rugs, etc. and analyze the colors. Once you are happy with your design choices, pick out a paint shade or shades from the chosen textiles.
Hanging Art
You can literally turn any wall of your home into your own personal art gallery. Everyone displays some form of art in their home—whether it is a rare oil painting or a cherished drawing from your child’s pre-school days. The road block that most encounter is how to properly hang art.
The best way to ensure there are no mistakes is to trace and cut-out the frames outline on paper. Simply tape the paper cut-outs onto your wall and keep on trying numerous placement options until you have the desired outcome.
Add Character to the home
Buying everything that matches results in a home that lacks character. So, what is the best way to add character? Simple, It takes time!.
Character will be built within the interior design by adding that odd table one finds at the flea market or the amazing side lamp that a street vendor was selling. Slowly over time one will find things he loves and builds the character of the home.
Remember the Focal Point
Every room needs a focal point—it offers a place for the eye to rest and assigns a room with a function . This is a very common mistake—forgetting to give each room a purpose or point to focus on.
Some rooms are simple—in a TV room the focal point usually ends up being the TV and the unit it is placed on, while all the other main objects in the room are focused and pointing towards the TV.
Don’t just scatter furnishings about the room— first, find a focus or purpose for the room, and then place the furnishings around that focal point.
As an Interior Designer, suggest your Clients the decorative pieces they shouldn’t keep
Even though your client may insist on keeping some decorative pieces which, according to you, are not worth keeping in a home, suggest them politely the mismatch of those pieces in the home.
Rather suggest them to have something in their home that bring them joy and happiness.
Suggest them to find a purpose for keeping all the decorative pieces. Whether they are handmade by their loved ones or they have bought them on their own, ask them to set themselves free and make their home full of things that can make them happy.
Lastly, don’t be shy of asking for Help from someone better than you
Even the most skilled Interior Designers can make mistakes. Sometimes, it can be difficult to spot your own mistake as a designer. A fresh set of skilled eyes can spot the problems.
You shouldn’t be shy of asking someone who is more experienced than you for an honest opinion on various aspects of Interior Design like color choice, fabrics, or room etc.
Also, listening to an advice doesn’t mean we have to take it—your clients home design is uniquely theirs and if they love it, then that’s all that really matters.
