Harmony and Balance in Interior Design

If you’re looking to design your new home or are thinking of doing renovations, having harmony and balance in interior design are two key factors in making your home look more put together.

It might be tempting to design each room in your new home as an individual space. However, having a home where each room feels unique while being unified is the most ideal outcome.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create balance and harmony when designing your future home through interior design techniques.

Creating Harmony and Balance With Design Choices

The key to creating a home that feels harmonious and balanced is in the design choices you pick out. Even if you’re doing a design for your Airbnb, this can help get you more bookings.

Whether you’re using wall decals from StickerBrand or furniture pieces from IKEA, you can apply these concepts to any element in your home.

Texture

Texture refers to how smooth, coarse, rough, or fluid the pieces in the room look like. This is often an overlooked design element since it isn’t so obvious, but it makes a huge difference.

Creating harmony throughout the rooms of your home doesn’t mean you have to put the same pieces with the same texture throughout. Instead, put a mix of textures that complement each other.

For example, you can put a bed frame with a smooth, matte finish that absorbs light in front of a mirror finish backboard to balance it out.

The general rule is that reflective surfaces make the piece and that part of the room look bigger while light-absorbing surfaces tend to make the piece and room look smaller.

Make sure to avoid using one type of texture throughout the whole room or house, as it creates monotony instead of harmony. Choose a mix of textures that balance each other out.

Color

Color is a crucial part of visual harmony and balance in interior design, because it can make or break how a room looks. It can also determine how fluid a room feels compared to the rest of the house.

Color harmony isn’t what most people think of - that is, having one color or shades of only one color throughout the entire home. Again, this is monotony and not harmony.

What you want to do with colors is choose a palette of between 3-5 colors that complement each other. These should be used throughout the house to maintain harmony.

Follow the 60-30-10 rule when it comes to color selection. 60 percent of the room should be dedicated to the main color, 30 to a secondary, and 10 to a complementary color.

For example, most of the 60% color comes from the walls. Then, the 30% comes in through the major pieces of the room, contrasting with the walls.

Finally, the remaining 10% complementary color should accent well with both the primary and secondary colors to draw attention to pieces that normally get overlooked.

Form

Form refers to the shape and size of an element within the room. How a piece appears to a viewer is largely dependent on how angular, smooth, small, or large it is.

To create harmony and balance within your home, you must pick between a mix of geometric, abstract, and organic shapes. Each type serves its own purpose and evokes certain feelings.

Geometric shapes are very angular and symmetrical, like triangles, squares, circles, and polygons. Geometric pieces evoke a more formal and “proper” feeling.

Abstract shapes are more artistic in nature and are usually a lot smaller. However, they draw attention to themselves and the area directly around them, promoting curiosity.

Organic shapes are more rounded, with curved lines often found in nature. These shapes are more inviting, comfortable, and casual, which is good for a relaxed environment.

Emphasis

Emphasis is an element or a group of elements in a room that draws attention to itself. It’s a piece that the rest of the room is built around to complement.

To create harmony and balance, you need a focal point that draws attention with elements around it to complement. Having no focal point removes that balance and makes a room bland.

A great example of emphasis being used in a room is having a large dining table with an intricate design. This can be surrounded by minimalist walls and furniture to balance it out.

Emphasis can work in tandem with other concepts. Having one piece in the room with a striking color surrounded by complementary colors can also create harmony and balance.

The only thing to keep in mind with the emphasis concept is not to include too many focal points. This can end up confusing a viewer instead of drawing them to a single point.

Contrast

Contrast is similar to emphasis in that it uses juxtaposition to create positive and negative space. However, contrast chooses to disperse its focus evenly as opposed to a focal point.

Creating contrast in a room is important for harmony and balance because it allows a room to look more lively and energized while still remaining true to the overall concept of the home.

For example, you can use color to create contrast between the walls of the kitchen and the countertop. Having two distinct colors creates contrast and invites further investigation by a viewer.

Contrast is also a great way to add emphasis to a room that doesn’t have any large focal point. Going back to the kitchen example, your kitchen utensils and equipment can be the contrast.