When you’re designing a home, there are always a few interior design tips that come to mind. Layer your rugs for dimension, create beautiful lines, and make sure your color palette is perfect! But even after you’ve done all that, sometimes you still aren’t satisfied with the decor type. There’s something off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. What is it about the home that makes it so hard to create something beautiful? Well, according to some designers, there’s a secret tip you may just be missing. It’s called the rule of thirds and it applies to just about everything. The next time you have an opportunity to design your home, we recommend that you go this route. We’ve done some research to find out some insider information about the rule of thirds so that you can design (or redesign) your dream home. Keep reading for more!
How to Design According to the Rule of Thirds
1) Group Things in Threes
The rule of thirds literally means to group things in threes so things look more balanced, according to the interior design website MyDomaine. You may want to stack books in threes, have three candles on your coffee table, or have three vases. If you don’t want to have threes and go a bit higher, you can always add more, just stick to the uneven number rule. A great way to do this is to start with your lighting. For example, have three lights at your bar or counter. Or maybe three candles in a row on your mantle or coffee table. This symmetry and balance is promoted through the rule of thirds. It basically brings the eye upwards and adds a focal point to tie any room together. Next time you’re designing a room or re-decorating, try this method out and see what a huge difference it makes to your space.
2) Divide Your Room Into Thirds
How does the rule of thirds apply to a bigger design, like a living room for example? In this case, you’ll want to “change the view of a room into a even three-by-three grid, so that there are two horizontal lines and two vertical lines dissecting each other to create a frame, like you would for noughts and crosses”, according to Better Homes and Gardens. There should be three distinct areas that you can map with your eyes, any more than that and you’ll have a room that’s full of chaos—and that is not visually appealing to the eye. A space that is not well defined looks a little more chaotic in our opinion and needs to have that spacing to look good. Think about if you had just a white room, what would make this space appealing? Color, texture, and more. This is what you need to think about when it comes to the rule of thirds.
3) Clearly Define Your Thirds with Design Elements
According to Better Homes and Gardens, even a backsplash can also be used as part of the rule of thirds grid and design elements. Their experts recommend that you “look to the finish materials like backsplash tile to visually organize the wall, create interest along the upper grid line and elongate the feeling of space in a smaller room”. Better Homes and Gardens says that, “it can be very stylish too, offering an opportunity to introduce more than one color onto the surfaces. Introduce an additional pop of color with hanging fixtures. Notice how the light fixture hanging down at the intersecting grid lines really draws the eye into the photo.” You can do this with many, many design elements, like the lighting in your kitchen or bathroom or for example, having three seats at the bar in your kitchen.
What to Remember
One key thing to remember is to make sure all your items are not of equal size. Having variety with shapes, sizes, colors, and more makes for an interesting design in a space. Group frames or chairs together so that they look uniform and create the appearance of unison. The best thing about this style is that you can basically move anything around to your liking, shifting furniture and decorations around whenever you feel like it, or buying and switching out pieces that you may get over or want to replace in the future. Remember, it’s not like having wallpaper where it’s permanently attached to your walls. Go ahead and achieve a gorgeous room with your new knowledge now and let us know how it goes designing your dream home.
