ASID Identifies Common Interior Design Mistakes

According to the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Missouri East chapter, there are interior design mistakes that people tend to do over and over again. Below are some of them and ASID’s recommendation on how to avoid them

Lack of estimating proportion is considered to be one of the problems in decorating according to Catherine Geyer of Geyer Designs, St. Louis. Geyer said that a lot of consumers are often tricked into buying large-scale furniture pieces because they were place in retail showrooms with very high ceilings or wide open spaces.

Geyer suggests mapping out the room dimensions or referring to existing furniture pieces. By carefully planning out the sizes of the furniture pieces according to the actual dimensions of the space, it can prevent a costly mistake. The same thing applies when it comes to choosing an area rug.

Another common interior design mistake comes from inadequate lighting. According to Geyer, people should learn how to layer lighting effects from different sources ranging from general lighting to accent lighting.

Cindy Kistner of GM Doveikis and Associates of St. Louis cites that people tend to decorate their homes like rooms in a bubble. This, she said, prevents continuity within the interiors. It is also important that this kind of continuity is applied to spaces which are connected to one another such as the living area, dining, kitchen and the hearth. Kistner said that using different kinds of colors or tonal values in different rooms can be disharmonious to the eye and can visually chop up the spaces instead of letting them flow from one to another.

For Teresa Drury of Textures Interior Design, people tend to play it safe when it comes to furniture pieces. The result, most interiors have all-matching furniture pieces instead of having an interesting mix of styles and fabrics. According to Drury, a welcoming interior is one that shows that it has evolved over time.