Interior design mistakes can happen to any of us, they’re hard to pick, making them even harder to fix. Knowing what to look out for and how to avoid common mistakes when you’re still looking at interior design ideas, before you’ve even been to the homewares store and started the process, can be extremely helpful to making sure the end product is exactly how you imagined it. 

Furniture Scaling 

Scale is the most common interior design mistake by far – so don’t feel terrible if this sounds like what you’ve done with your living room. This mistake can be made by putting too many large pieces of furniture into a room, making it seem smaller and stuffier than it really is. In contrast, it’s important to make sure the room is full of furniture pieces that complement its size - if you have a quite large room and you fill it with lots of small pieces this can also make it look cluttered.

 

Scale is also relevant in terms of the heights between your furniture and the ceiling above. In any room, it’s important to place furniture of different heights, as if it were a city scape with many different building heights. This gives the room extra levels and more calming proportions. Interior designers have a great eye for what fits where, so if you’re having difficulty here, its a good opportunity to ask a professional.

Unbalanced Lighting 

Lighting is often overlooked when decorating a space, which is a much bigger mistake than it seems. Lighting is central to how everything in the room looks during the day and night, and so it’s important to be balanced and purposeful. For starters, a dimly lit room is a huge mood killer – no matter how much you want to call it mood lighting. If you can’t see all the furniture that you just bought to fill a space, what is the point of having it?

 

In contrast, a harshly lit room is equally as uncomfortable. Lighting should provide a feeling of effortless comfort to a room, and harsh lights can make it feel more like a hospital. Lighting will have an effect on the colours you have decorated the room with, so it’s important to keep this in mind too as harsh lights in a pale coloured room can be blinding. The ideal lighting should have a balance to it that works with the natural light coming in the windows, and provide enough functionality to light a space properly.

Fear of Colour 

Colour is an interior designer’s best friend, but it definitely isn’t everyone’s. When decorating a room, it’s more important than you would think to add a pop of colour to brighten up a space. Monochrome may be trendy, but even the most black and white spaces still have a tonal range to provide contrast – hence, black and white. A small tonal range in a space can make too many aspects blend in when they should stand out.

 

Think of a space as a series of layers; a base layer in a plain tone that makes up the walls, and everything you want to blend into the background, with a second layer made up of your main items in one colour, and then lastly a layer of a few select items that you want to stand out in the space – these items should be a contrasting colour. This adds character and a focal point to a space and is incredibly effective.

 

Over-Decorating

Putting lots and lots of things in a space isn’t a positive thing when it comes to design. This one is a common mistake, and it’s a hard one to fix when so many of us have that need to hold on to things. Not to worry, there are lots of different ways to combat over decorating that don’t involve Marie Kondo-ing your house, or becoming a minimalist.

 

If you don’t want to start throwing things away, call your problem a ‘collection’ and arrange all your hoarded items on display in one place. A bookshelf can be repurposed for trinkets or ceramics, or you could try designating a feature wall to help limit the places you put all the art you ‘just had to have’. Don’t worry, we’re all a little guilty of this!

 

Talk to The Professionals

If you’re finding that you’re making some of these mistakes when decorating your home, and would like some advice from a professional interior designer in Auckland, contact us at Allium Interiors today!