Last Updated on November 3, 2021 by Kravelv
A fantastic room design makes you feel right at home in your, well, home! And if you place your furniture just right, you can maximize the given space in any room and turn it into its best form.
Of course, most rooms are flexible, meaning that there is no one size fits all in terms of arrangement, or furniture, as it relies more on your own design sense and intent on what you aim to use a specific room for, be it as a living room, a bedroom, or a storage closet.
However, flexible as your custom rooms may be, it is still not infallible to mistakes, where furniture could end up looking cluttered, messy, or even useless.
A bad design choice and not a room you would feel comfortable in, which I don’t think is what you are aiming for! With that said, let’s examine some room design mistakes that you should definitely avoid:
Getting lighting wrong
This is something you will not notice too much at first until your lighting starts disrupting your comfort.
Yes, as it turns out, different rooms can emanate a different feel in your environment, from something as simple as the color of the light bulbs you choose for your kitchen to the natural light from the sun outside.
For instance, having too much sunlight from outside may make the living room too bright and distracting to settle down and read a book. On hotter days, you may even find yourself heating up or even potentially get annoying sunburn.
In which case, being able to control how much light actually enters your room will prove immensely helpful. Using things like made to measure curtains give you that control in making sure just the right amount of light hits your room. And as they are curtains that means they give the added aesthetic bonus, while also being very flexible (Sometimes you want the curtains flat to the wall, while sometimes you want them covering the entire window, no?)
Pushing furniture up against the walls
This is actually quite common in many homes. Couches, chairs, sometimes even tables are pushed against the wall in an attempt to save space.
Now, unless your room is the same size as your office cubicle, this does not necessarily mean that your room will feel bigger. In fact, it might actually feel even smaller because your walls seem like they are “extending” through the furniture that you placed.
Not only that, but can you imagine how much of a pain it is to be unable to completely reach an area you want to clean because your giant couch is blocking it? It happens more often than not with furniture placed against the wall, because you can only clean them from one direction: the front.
Instead, at the very least, give the wall some breathing room, and move your furniture a bit to give some space. You get more space to move around while cleaning, and the space looks larger too. It’s a win-win!
Improper bed placement
Beds are one of the few exceptions to tip number 2, as most of them are, quite frankly, really large.
Placing them on the center of the room takes up a whole lot of space, and if you put in any other furniture, it would make entering the bedroom feel very tight.
Instead, place the head of your bed against the wall. Now you have much more space to put in furniture like a nightstand (which should, of course, have some space from the wall too) and a dresser or two while still having enough for yourself to roam around.
Ignoring the purpose of the room
This seems like it does not need to be said. You already have your basic room structures, after all: Living Room, Dining Area, Kitchen, Bedroom(s), etc. That all fit onto one important category of the house.
However, depending on your lifestyle, you may use rooms differently from its original purpose. For instance, where would you work? The living room? Or is the dining table a good spot if you don’t want to accidentally get lazy and fall asleep? How about when you are inviting friends? Where will they stay? How many friends are you inviting?
Yes, rooms are very much flexible, but since your house is such a big part of your life, the least you can do is adjust specific parts of it accordingly with your lifestyle, especially if you want it be convenient while also proper looking at the same time.
Filling space with too many accessories
Yes, we get it. Your accessories are pretty, but they would look prettier on display, instead of hiding inside your closet, which is fine, really.
And when you have a lot of space, you might feel tempted to fill it all up with as much accessories as you can to add to the design.
But you know what they say, too much of a good thing can turn out bad. Too much ketchup on your egg might make you feel sick, and too many accessories on your room might make your eyes feel sick. Instead of making your room looks pretty; it instead looks like a disorganized mess that can overwhelm the eyes of any person.
When you walk in an accessory shop, your eyes focus more on the specific item you want to buy, but have you ever considered looking at all of the items as designs for the shop as a whole? Not so nice when there’s too many of them, is it?
That is why you are better off starting with a minimalist approach first: Prioritize the essentials of a specific room, like the bed of a bedroom or the table of a dining room, then start working from there by adding more things like accessories or other furniture.
Wrapping Up
Designing your room can be a fun task, but you also want to set some boundaries on what you are choosing. Having too many choices can get overwhelming, after all.
And of course, there are some designing ideas that you want to minimize, if not avoid outright if you want a room that feels proper according to its function.