Comfort vs. Style: How to Balance Out Your Home Design
There are only three things we really strive for when furnishing our own home: comfort, style, and practicability. Hitting a balance of all these is pretty hard, but if you know what you’re doing, you can hit each target in your home to great effect. Read on to find out how you can balance comfort and style in your home.
1 Balance your materials
When it comes to physical comfort in the home, what furniture you buy is obviously extremely important. The first thing you buy when moving into your own space is a sofa or chair or even a cheap mattress and if you have only that and a laptop for entertainment and work, the rest is window dressing.
If you’re looking to combine style and comfort, it’s best to go for items that combine solid and soft materials. Sure, you want a squishy sofa, but its wooden stiletto legs really make it. Get yourself a bed with the best mattress that feels like a dream, and buy a stylish headboard to go with it.
2 Balance your colors
Comfort means appeasing your mind as much as your body. If you come home and feel a headache coming on the longer that you’re in the room, that might be more to do with color. For example, it’s what a lot of people go off the maximalist style for too much happening at once. However, doing the maximalism style right is a great example of how to avoid a headache due to color. Doing it right involves slimming down your color palette, tightening up the different patterns you’re using, and counteracting bold with neutrals for a look that doesn’t overwhelm.
Taking it a step further, if you don’t have a maximalist style but are getting the feeling that your home is too chaotic, calmer colors might be just the ticket to bringing your blood pressure down. Neutrals are an option, but so are pastels, muted tones, and jewel tones if you’re feeling bold.
3 Balance your space
Another way you can bring on a headache when looking at your home, however, is with space. Space is the worst of both elements since you’ve not got much room to literally breathe if your home is too full of stuff. Sure, you might have a small home so that space fills up easily, but dust will accumulate in a smaller space, causing you to go around with the hoover and the feather duster every weekend to avoid sneezing.
Having a clear-out is a good way to avoid using up so much space in your rooms and your mind. You don’t necessarily have to get rid of everything but more, be sure that everything has a place.
Be careful about the furniture you buy, for instance. Keep away from display cabinets. Doors and drawers are your friends. They can put literal meaning to the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind”. Look for beds that double as storage; opt for an ottoman rather than a pouffe for the storage element. Use your vertical space for shelves, etc.
