The latest trends in home decor reveal a desire for a feeling of tranquility and calmness, perhaps as a response to today’s busy and distracted lifestyles. From the decluttering craze to a return to natural materials in home design, everyone is looking for a way to create a peaceful, less hectic home space. When it comes to home decor, less is definitely more.
How can you tap into this yen for a little more Zen?
1. Simplify your design strategy
When revamping your room to create a more minimalist effect, choose a limited color palette, meaning one to three colors at most. Select mostly more muted or neutral colors, though you can use one vivid color in a piece of furniture or art to grab the spotlight.
Let the textures of the materials that you use for the floors, walls, ceilings, and furnishings – whether they are natural wood, stone, ceramics, glass, tile, fabrics or canvas – create the room’s visual interest instead of yesterday’s too-busy colors and patterns. Choose a couple of contrasting textures, like glass and reclaimed lumber, or woven fabric and stone, to highlight in the room for the best effect.
2. Declutter your spaces
Decide what items you really want and need to be in each room and get rid of the rest – or find a way to store it neatly, preferably out of sight. One of the greatest visual clutter culprits today comes from technology. It’s hard to know what to do with the mass and tangle of cords from all the latest gadgets, power strips and chargers everyone uses in their homes. You can find products to streamline or hide them from view.
3. Choose furnishings with clean lines
When you’re selecting new furniture for your minimalist rooms, look for high-quality, standout pieces designed with clean lines, with no fussy design details or busy patterns. Don’t acquire more furniture than the room really needs. Chances are you can do without all those end tables and extra chairs.
Make one exceptional, stylish piece of furniture be the focal point for each room, and don’t over-furnish or over-decorate the space around it. Then avoid the urge to smother the couch or sectional with tons of blankets and throw pillows. Let the furniture speak for itself.
4. Streamline artistic expression
Instead of filling every wall with pictures, choose just one accent wall, eliminating excessive decor elements around it. Let one work of art dominate that space, reducing any competition for attention.
You can also use a laser projector to display a chosen photograph or work of art on your accent wall. With 8.3 million pixels, some of it delivers impeccable precision and detail at four times the resolution of Full HD, along with incredibly vibrant color reproduction. It works without the need to darken the room around it, using gentle light that produces clear images without any harsh brightness.
5. Leave plenty of open space
Resist the urge to fill every corner and surface of the room with ornaments and knickknacks. It’s the open space, unencumbered by any visual clutter, that creates the feeling of calm and tranquility you’re craving.
And if you’re lucky enough to have a great view out the window, install only simple, streamlined window treatments – or no window treatments at all – to highlight that view.
Minimalist decor is all about making careful choices and choosing the best quality furnishings and decor over the quantity of items. You can turn any room into a beautiful showcase that you’d be happy to entertain and live in, with some thoughtful decision-making.