Have you ever felt like starting a whole new blank page in your life? This is what a blank house feels like, lots of empty walls painted in generic colors. A whole world of possibility for you to fill in and leave your very personal mark, making sure your living space reflects your own personality.
Besides being a matter of style, when done right, decoration also has the power to make your environments more effective and aligned with the intended purpose of that space. For example, if you have a home-office, decoration can contribute to your motivation, inspiration and focus without distracting you. However, throwing random items in random parts of your workspace can create the feeling of chaos. Our relationship with our environments is dynamic. Just as much as an organized environment can make you feel focused, the way we naturally organize our external environment paints a very good picture of our inner state.
If you came here looking for unique home decor ideas, you will learn much more than that, you will have an idea of what professional decorators have in mind when deciding your decoration items.
To create a balanced and original environment filled with meaningful decor items, there are two important aspects to keep in mind: selecting the right items and arranging them. Carefully curating the right items to fill the spaces in your house is a creative endeavor that can last years. Any items that have a particular meaning for you, or that represent an aspect of your personality, career or hobbies, might be a good fit to be a part of your decor collection. Besides that, any piece of art that speaks to you, even if you cannot explain why, also deserves careful consideration.
How to decorate your home with Composition
The real challenge is when it comes to arranging those items in a harmonic manner into your house. One concept from visual arts that can help guide this process is the idea of composition. Composition refers to the ways in which different elements of an artwork are combined. If you look at any wall you intend to decorate as a work of art, you can apply the concept of composition to help you distribute the items in a harmonic way. There are, at least, seven aspects of composition in art that must be taken into consideration also in your decoration process:
Unity
How connected are the items you are using in your decoration? Do they all, together, transmit any particular message, or do they seem completely unrelated? Unity invites you to think about what is the overall message or feeling that you would like a decoration to transmit in a particular wall or room of your house. You may actually have a collection of articles that have completely different origins, however, using your sensibility to decide the ones that tell a story together, is the way to go.
Balance
Do you tend to overcrowd one part of your wall and leave the other empty? If so, this might create a feeling of unease and tension in the room. Balance refers to symmetry, which means making sure items are harmonically arranged throughout all sides of the space. That does not mean that you have to mathematically divide the items according to your available area, rather that if one side has too many of one type of item or color, it can be balanced on the other side with a different element.
Movement
The way you choose to place your paintings can contribute to a sense of movement in your environment, by for example, choosing different sizes of frames and objects, or even positioning your objects in a wavy way as opposed to a straight line.
Rhythm
Rhythm is a pattern, and we know patterns can be created visually, by leading the eyes of the observer at a certain pace. For example, by using large geometric shapes, such as squares and triangles with a certain constancy, or repeating a certain color you can create a visual sense of rhythm in your decoration.
Focus
As an impulse, when we look at a work of art, or even a decorated room, our brains tend to look for a focal point, which means a central piece around which all the other items exist. So if you have that one very special, perhaps expensive painting or sculpture, it can potentially be the focus of your decoration. For example, in the picture below, we can identify the painting as the focus of the composition. The central position in which it is located easily gives this away.
Contrast
Contrast is an essential concept for your home decor’s composition. We know well that, for example, having a patterned couch in front of a patterned wall paper can provoke a headache, besides not looking very stylish at all. When thinking of your decoration arrangement, try to contrast the objects with the colors of the wall. For example, a white room filled with sharp colored objects, like in the picture below. Besides color, contrast can be created with sharp differences in shape, color, size, texture etc.
Proportion
Proportion refers to the scale of objects, that means, for example, making sure no objects are exaggeratedly bigger than others of the same type, even if they are the focus of the decoration. Proportion can also be oriented by sacred geometry, for example, meaning that you can use certain ratios, like the golden ratio, to decide the optimal distance between certain objects.
By keeping these basic visual art aspects in mind, you are much better equipped to decorate your house on your own. Keep in mind that while these are rough guiding lines, they are not rigid rules, and nothing should take away from the fun you should have going on this decoration journey. Let your creativity go wild! Sooqbeirut has a wide variety of items you can choose from to help fill up your house with interesting and creative decor items and artwork.
Written by Yasmim Franceschi exclusively for sooqbeirut
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