Decorating in the balance

After years of practical experience as a designer I can tell you this: balance is everything. In fact, if there's any design lesson whose mastery is essential, it's this one. The ability to skillfully harmonize a décor's essential elements - scale, proportion, light, pattern, and colour, takes practice however; winning attempts tip the scales of design success decidedly in your favour.

Scale

In residential design scale usually concerns the relationship between an item or a room and the human body. Does the room feel sufficiently cozy for reading or watching television in? Is the chair large enough to comfortably support someone curled up with a book? Is there enough space between the chairs and the armoire for people to pass through comfortably? Furniture that is slightly over-scaled gives a room a sense of opulence and makes it feel cozy. Conversely, furniture that is small in scale can feel uninviting and uncomfortable. The lesson? When in doubt, err on the side of large.

Balance applies to space planning as well. In a photograph such as the one here, it's easy to see that every item of furniture has a visual weight. Large-scale items such as armoires, pianos, and sofas need to be offset with several multiple items of a smaller scale. For example, the dark wood dining table in the foreground is balanced by the pair of sofas in the background. In addition, the dark window frames serve to bring the upper portion of the room into balance with the lower portion of the room.

Lighting

Because lighting has both a physiological and emotional effect on humans, the quality of light is an essential consideration. Balance, once again, is the key to success. Excessive contrast causes eyestrain while absolute uniformity is monotonous and dull. Obviously, the requirements for a television room are different from those of a kitchen or home office. A standing floor lamp with opaque shade pushes light down onto a book or the TV guide for reading. The same lamp with a sheer shade spreads the glow over a wider portion of the room. It's important to determine how you use a room before you can light it effectively.

Pattern or No Pattern

Though contemporary décor often features little or no pattern, decorating these rooms still involves getting the balance right. When pattern is absent, textures become more noticeable, so striving for a mix of rough and smooth, shiny and matte creates interest. For traditional interiors, pattern is an essential element. In this Sea Island, Georgia home the porcelain vase in the center of the table has much more visual weight than either of the glass hurricane lamps flanking it, even though they are roughly the same size. This illustrates the fact that a smaller proportion of pattern can balance a larger proportion of solid colour. In other words, a little goes a long way.

Colour

Just as pattern has more weight than an absence of pattern, so too, deeper colour has more weight than an absence of colour. Working with mid-tone colours (neither too light nor too dark) offers maximum versatility; reading light and soft in daylight, deep and luxurious by evening light. Darker colours such as hunter green and burgundy will look great in the evening, but might leave a room feeling off balance in broad daylight. Light colours such as the white walls in this open concept living and dining room are most effective when there is an abundance of natural daylight.