ELEMENTS & PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN: Space & Harmony

I Need Some Space! And So Does Your Room.

Space is the area above and below elements of furnishing or decoration in your room. It is also the space to the left and to the right of it. A typical poorly arranged room will have too much space on one side, and not enough on the other. Thus the room lacks harmony.

Quite often, people tend to cram too many items on the floor, leaving too much space in the higher parts of the room, towards the ceiling. The floor arrangement looks heavy, and there is too much unemployed space in the higher parts of the room.

Also, people tend to put most furniture against one, or two walls, leaving the other walls uncomfortably empty, with too much space available there and not enough on the other side. HARMONY is the key word here. The space should be left proportionally on all sides of the equation. Think of space in the context of interior design as similar margins of relatively empty area around objects or groups of objects.

ELEMENT

Space refers to the area between, above, below or around images and visual elements. Space relates and contributes to perspective. In this example ample space of the room that is both wide and very long, is bordered by the wall with pictures on the left, and the windows on the right.

PRINCIPLE

Harmony is the arrangement of a space that gives the viewer the feeling that all elements of the space form a coherent whole. In this case, we have a harmonious arrangement of visual elements on both sides of the picture, as well as in the front and at the back of the room.

OUTCOME

Applying harmonious arrangement to the space creates a feeling of a coherent unity of the room, while maintaining its gentle and stylish appeal. The “busy-ness” of the wall on the left is harmoniously balanced by the presence of a long table on the right side of the room. The large space of the timber floors is harmoniously divided by two matching floor rugs.

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