The Decor Mistake That Makes Your Home Design Look Harsh

When it comes to creating a cohesive interior, having a plan is important. For one, you want to ensure that color palettes, textures, and details are complementary and consistent throughout your home. You also want spaces to feel intentional and balanced. But thinking too hard about curating the "perfect home" with over-the-top color coordination or matching sets isn't the approach to a harmonious interior style that you think it is. In fact, following a rigid blueprint full of matching sets and too much symmetry can actually make your home look harsh and rigid rather than curated, so it's a decor mistake to avoid. And, other people can notice, too.

Sure, coordination can help your space appear balanced. But in putting too much reverence on fleeting design trends, employing overly symmetrical arrangements throughout the rooms, and using matching sets in order to achieve cohesiveness, you run the risk of a space that looks and feels forced. That's because this approach of checking off the elements of your "design checklist" is devoid of character and takes away from carefully curated personalization, which is the cornerstone of design.

One of the ways your home can look forced — or worse, inauthentic — is getting lost in the latest design craze. That's because by following trendy tips, you are constantly on the hunt for specific furniture and decor pieces (which are often mass-produced) to fit a fad that will fizzle out sooner rather than later. Rather than choosing furniture and matching decorative pieces that appease a trendy aesthetic, collect items that are authentic to your personal expression. Pieces that are collected over time will look tailored to your style, not the other way around.

And while you may be tempted to create balance based on the importance of symmetry in interior design, it's probably best to avoid overly symmetrical pieces, like matching photo frames hung adjacent to one another or twin table lamps on either side of your sofa. That's because adding matching sets to your online shopping cart, whether they're for your bedroom or living room, might get the job of coordination done, but when put together, they can easily look dull and uninspired. Instead, you want to focus on curation, which requires thoughtfulness and is chosen with deliberate purpose. For example, take into consideration how the textures of a sofa will look and feel against the tile in the living room, and what mood you're setting by layering patterns and fabrics of these pieces.