It’s one thing to forego hiring an interior designer, but actually foregoing the fundamentals of interior design and messing up something as important as your living room with overtly rookie mistakes is something completely different. Before diving headfirst into decorating the DIY way, you should be aware of a few tricky parts that can make or break the atmosphere in your home.
Besides Nottingham aerial installation, you can count on us for tips on all things interior design, including walking you through these 5 small, but costly, at least time- and energy-wise, mistakes that an experienced designer would never commit.
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Neglecting Scale
Imagine spending hours on end picking out the perfect sofa, going back and forth between a few options, juxtaposing their multiple features like color, shape, price, and finally making your choice, not to mention taking the sofa back to your home and somehow managing to get it in, only to find out it’s actually too big for the space you had designated for it, and now it blocks a major doorway. At that point, many people might just give up decorating altogether and watch TV from the floor.
Neglecting scale is one of the most amateur mistakes you can make, and the worst part of it is, it can have sweeping consequences, especially if you happen to buy all the furniture at once.
Even if a piece of furniture doesn’t block a major pathway, that still doesn’t mean it’s the right fit size- and/or shape-wise. You might end up with very disproportionate furniture that seemingly distorts the shape of your living room, disrupts its flow and makes it feel cluttered, or at the very least, doesn’t make the most of its space.
You need to get some precise measurements for the different areas of your living room where you plan to have furniture and adhere to them strictly.
Rugs That Aren’t the Correct Size
Somewhat similar to neglecting scale for your furniture, forgetting that rugs have to fit a particular space is also something rather easily overlooked and hardly fixable. You might be able to remodel a rug that’s too big while preserving its patterns, with “might” being a key word here, whereas an overly small rug can be glossed over with a natural weave rug underneath it or perhaps with the furniture. However, clearly, neither of those options are ideal.
Neglecting Lighting
Considering that most people get to truly bask in the comfort of their home at night, when the natural light is no longer part of the equation, so many people overlook or even completely neglect lighting as an indispensable element of interior design and instead merely look at it from a practical standpoint.
To harness lighting’s aesthetic power, you should think of it as if your home is a film set. Having three or even more light sources that form a triangle is the gold standard, with their respective glows matching as best as possibly.
Being too Neutral and too One-Note
Many rookie DIY enthusiasts play it too safely out of fear of messing things up. While this is understandable and wise to a certain extent, settling entirely for neutral colors and/or decorating in a completely one-note fashion dooms you to imminent boredom of your living room.
You have to take at least some chances, whether they come in the form of some accents that pop, interesting embellishments that spice things up, or anything else that will breathe new life into your living room while still aligning with its style.
It’s not as hard as you may think, as you can bring home some color samples and get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.
Not Having a Color Palette
This point lies on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to the previous one, and it can be even more detrimental to the atmosphere of your living room. While a boring, lifeless décor is one of the last things you want, having a sickening mess of colors is probably one of the few worse alternatives.
To avoid that, you need to have your mind set on a color palette before you even start decorating. That way, all elements of the décor will go together fairly well, as long as you don’t veer away from the initial plan.
If you avoid those 5 mistakes, not only will you save yourself lots of hassle, but also increase your chances of relaxing in a living room in which you truly feel at home.
