HOW TO CREATE FLOW IN YOUR HOME
When it comes to designing and decorating our homes one of the most common mistakes we all make is tackling a house room by room, without thought for the house a whole. In doing this, individual rooms could look amazing, but when you take a step back the house feels disjointed and just doesn’t flow. Thoughtful design will allow you to not only physically move around your home comfortably and with ease, but will also make your home feel cohesive visually. Good flow in your home can be as simple as making sure the dining space is close to the kitchen, but it should also incorporate smaller details, like a continuity of some colour and consistent character. So what steps can you take to improve the flow in your own home?
1- COLOUR
For me, colour is one of the easiest ways of creating flow in your home. Ideally, you should pick a base colour and an accent colour that can be used across the house. You can then add varying complimentary colours to different rooms, but they all work well with the base and accent colour. A great economical way of doing this is by painting all of your radiators in the same accent colour, as shown below in one of our more recent projects where we painted all the radiators a dark grey.
You should also consider flooring colours when looking at a base wall colour, you want your flooring to compliment the scheme. So when thinking about colours throughout the house, you should also be thinking about what carpet, wooden flooring or tiles you will also use. Where you zone off rooms with different flooring you will make your space feel smaller, so for example if you have an open plan kitchen / living area, the flooring should stay the same throughout. If you are considering carpets in the bedrooms, you should go for the same carpets in all of the rooms to make them flow nicely into each other.
Photo: Pinterest
2 - CHARACTER
Once you have your wall colours and flooring finishes planned, even with a great base you will not achieve a beautiful flow in your home if you go for different styles in each room. If you are someone that doesn’t necessarily know what “style” you like, then you can easily mix styles in the same space, but it is better to mix styles within the same space across the house, rather that have different rooms in different styles.
One of my top tips I always give to my clients when they say they don’t know what their style is, is to purchase items they really love and not to worry about how they will “fit”. If you purchase items you are really drawn to, you will find that they do all actually go together.
Photo: Pinterest
3 - BE AS OPEN AS POSSIBLE
Where appropriate make your space as open as possible, using open plan layouts will make your house feel more expansive and spacious. Making your home more open plan also encourages the light to travel further and connects different parts of the house with ease. An open plan home encourages communication by several people being able to do different activities in the same space.
