Typically, an eclectic room won’t have more than a few different styles in play to keep the look anchored and intentional rather than haphazard and disjointed. A mix of just two or three styles can work beautifully, as long as you choose complementary pieces, colours, textures, and shapes. With that in mind, here are some general guidelines to help refine your eye for blending aesthetics:
Start With A Consistent Colour Story
Settle on your colour story before you so much as pick up a paint swatch. It doesn’t have to be anything excessive; 2 or 3 core colours are more than enough, and the 60/30/10 rule can aid your decisions: 60% is the dominant colour, 30% is the secondary, 10% is the accent. Though you don’t have to follow this to the exact number, it is a good guideline for designing a more cohesive-looking space.
Three out of four homeowners stick with beige for a good reason – it makes for the easiest canvas that you can get the most mileage out of. A neutral colour base allows you more freedom to experiment with modern, classic, rustic, vintage, and everything in between.
A warm beige, for example, won’t argue with your minimalist chrome and glass lamps, or with a richly upholstered traditional armchair draped in silk. Whatever genre you’re drawn to, a neutral backdrop keeps the peace.
The 80/20 Rule Keeps You From Going Too Far
This is the most practical guideline for those who like to mix it up. Roughly 80% of your room follows one style lead – the style that most expresses what you’re trying to do. The remaining 20% is where you shake things up, express contrast, or display pieces from a second style.
For example, if you’re going mostly contemporary, that 20% might be a single traditional wingback chair or a pair of exquisite antique brass candlesticks. The key to this style is self-discipline. Your “accent” style should look like an intentional decision, not a remnant from an old-room version.
When it’s tough to judge that balance – say, because some of your heirlooms must get along with new purchases in the room – the right interior designer can help you. It’s their job to see the room more clearly than you possibly can, given your history with the items and ideas in it.
Use A Bridge Element To Link Different Eras
A bridge element is a similar material or finishing that is used in items from different design families. For example, the same warm walnut wood tone in a mid-century sideboard, a modern floating shelf, and a traditional picture frame. Or the same aged brass hardware finish from the vintage cabinet pulls to the contemporary floor lamp.
The bridge element works because it gives the eye a path to follow. Without one, a room full of mixed styles reads as a collection of unrelated objects. With one, the different pieces feel like they were all chosen by the same person with a specific point of view.
Pick your bridge element before you even start shopping or rearranging your items. This becomes the filter through which you assess anything you add.
Negative Space Is Doing More Work Than You Think
One of the easiest ways to distinguish between a tidy, composed living space and one that’s all over the place is by the amount of negative space that can be found throughout the room. Negative space, sometimes also referred to as white space, is the “breathing room” that’s left around furniture pieces, on a bookshelf, or between a cluster of objects.
This is an essential element that lets people know that the space has been decorated with intent. When it comes to blending multiple decorating styles, negative space is even more crucial. Each unique piece of object or furniture must have enough visual space that lets it stand out on its own before the room’s overall design brings everything together.
Scooting pieces together too closely erases those distinctions between individual styles, and it simply looks like a jumbled mess rather than a visually engaging one. The bottom line? Try to avoid the temptation to cover every surface. A bookshelf holding five unique, carefully selected objects with negative space in between and around them will always look more professionally designed than a shelf stuffed with 15 objects.
Distribute Visual Weight Evenly
Visual weight is basically how heavy an object appears to be. This can be influenced by the colour of an object (dark colours appear heavier), the size of an object (larger objects appear heavier), the depth of an object (an object with more depth appears heavier), and the texture of an object (more texture gives the illusion of a heavier object).
When you mix styles, you often mix visual weights (traditional tends to be denser and darker, modern tends to be lighter and more open). If all your “heavy” pieces land in one corner of the room, that corner dominates the space and the room feels unbalanced.
Walk to the doorway of the room and look at it as a whole. Is one corner calling all the attention? Then redistribute. Maybe move a lighter modern piece into the heavy corner, or anchor that airy contemporary zone with a darker rug or a piece of art.
Scale plays a role here, too. A small accent piece from one style won’t balance out a large statement piece from another. You may need two or three smaller pieces.
As with colour, the idea is to create a room that looks like it was put together by someone who really knew what they were doing – even if all the pieces came from different rooms on different continents.
DISCLOSURE – This is a collaborative post.
