Interior design takes very keen and knowledgeable eyes, but if you insist on attempting to design your own home, these tips will help you avoid making the most amateur mistakes.
Have you ever thought, “Designing my own home? How difficult can it be?”
You proceeded with your research, found the theme to your liking, went on a hunt for some of the best furniture in the market and proceeded with filling up the space in your house, only to realise that… nothing really matched.
What could have possibly gone wrong? After all, you had printouts of the theme.
On the surface, decorating your home is about what you like. Beyond that, however, there are elements of design like colour, scale, lighting and placement that should be taken into consideration in any space. They affect how the space will look and feel to you.
You may be out shopping and see something you love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will look perfect in your home. There are a lot of common mistakes that almost everyone makes when designing their personal spaces. Here we look at the 8 most common mistakes and how to avoid making them.
1. Picking furniture without considering your overall look
You’ve visited and been in homes before where it looks like it was designed by five different individuals with vastly different design aesthetics. It’s usually not intentional. That sometimes happens when people choose pieces of furniture, lighting, and fixtures without thinking about whether they fit the overall look of the space they have. There are many pieces of beautiful furniture out there but not all of them belong in your home. Consider if something you buy will fit the look you are going for and not be distracted by how good it looks on its own.
2. Forgetting to consider the effects of colour
Playing with colours can often make a place come alive but it can sometimes dour a place out too. If you are someone that likes darker, richer colours for walls and furniture, do consider if the space has enough natural light before you start painting the walls a dark colour or choose pieces of furniture with deep colour tones. We sometimes see wall colours in catalogues and magazines, and we think it looks nice, but we sometimes forget that the picture was taken with a lot of lighting. If you are not careful, you can end up with a dark and dingy space that doesn’t look inviting at all.
3. Not measuring things
As much as you trust your eyes’ ability to gauge the size of things in relation to the space it is meant to fit in, don’t ever take this risk. Furniture items have a funny way of looking like they would easily fit into a space you have but don’t forget that in some cases where you are dealing with solid pieces of furniture, the difference of a few centimetres could be the difference between a perfect fit and a complete waste of money. Always measure everything before purchasing.
4. Not considering ‘breathing space’ for furniture
Just because a piece of furniture’s measurement fits into a space you have, it doesn’t mean it would look good. For example, items of furniture like a couch, dining table and feature cabinets need space around it for it to look good. Cramming many pieces of large furniture together in a space without offering each piece the necessary space to stand out will make your space look cramped and messy. Sometimes it’s better to opt for a smaller piece of furniture if it allows more breathing room for the space you have.
5. Not considering traffic flow and movement
A common mistake made by people designing a space for themselves is they focus on making the room look the best they can but they forget to think about people and how they would be using the space. It’s one thing if a piece of furniture fits into a certain corner of a space, but it can be a bummer if you’ve not made a clear way for them to get to the furniture. Nothing annoys us more than knocking into things just to make your way around a room. Always consider traffic flow and movement of people when arranging furniture around the room.
6. Not planning power source placements
Nothing can spoil the look of a space quicker than having a messy glut of wires running along your beautifully painted walls. Always think about the power sources you would need for key appliances such as standing lights or table lamps, kitchen appliances, TV, phone chargers, etc. Thinking through everything properly not only creates a neat and clean look for your space, but it is also safer in the long term.
So you’ve just bought a place, you’ve read through the list of common mistakes above and you are determined on avoiding them. You’ve also been going furniture shopping, but you often wonder if that sofa or TV console is really going to look nice in that space in your home. Right there at the back of your head you wonder – wouldn’t it be great if there was an app that could help me do all of this?
As a matter of fact, there is an app that can help you do exactly all that.
SofaX is a cool VR home design free app that helps homeowners to design their house using real furniture and real floor plans in a VR environment. The impressive thing is that the app is preloaded with more than 1000 floor plans of actual projects within Klang Valley, covering 150 projects from over 70 developers. Even if your development is not covered in SofaX, you can scroll through their ‘generic rooms’ and look for a layout that looks the closest to the unit you have.
This means that if you have purchased a property recently, you may be able to find the property you have purchased and use the actual schematics of the unit to design your house. This, culminated with the fact that the app comes preloaded with 2000+ home furnishing products in 3D that you can place in the virtual layout. If you like the product, you can obtain the merchant’s information—such as contact number and location—on the app and make your way to the physical stores to get a feel of the quality before making a purchase.
You no longer have to wonder if that couch is going to look nice in your space because you can actually virtually place that couch into the space and see how it looks. Apart from that, there is also a wall of studio images that are curated from thousands of design inspirations which can help aspiring DIY interior designers have a blueprint on how they want to start. Homebuyers can also search for home professionals from the listing that can help them with a variety of services such as Aircond Supplies and Installation; Carpentry Work; Electrical & Wiring, Plumbing Service and many more. Pretty awesome, right?
Download SofaX today and it promises to be your best friend throughout your process of setting up your new home.