In addition to light, color, pattern and line, interior design has additional components important to the overall composition to a space. These all combine on a stage (the space itself) which can be easy on the eyes or full of color and pattern clashes. To ensure the components to a space easily flow, you have to pay attention to a few crucial concepts.
Balance
When considering the importance of balancing a room, you want to ensure the equal distribution of visual weight. This can include such balance as symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radial. Symmetrical balance is characterized by the same objects repeated in the same positions on either side of a vertical axis. Asymmetrical balance is more casual and less contrived in feeling, but more difficult to achieve while radial symmetry is when all the elements of a design are arrayed around a center point.
Rhythm
Finding rhythm doesn’t only have to apply to music, as in interior design it’s an extremely valuable component. Emphasizing the importance of visual pattern repetition, interior design rhythm is defined as continuity, recurrence or organized movement. So acutely focusing on repetition, progression, transition and contrast will help you achieve a comfortable rhythm to your space.
That is, with progression, an element and increasing or decreasing one or more of its qualities. This most easily accomplished with a gradation by size, such as lining varying sizes of candles on a coffee table or books on a bookshelf from shortest to tallest. Meanwhile, transition tends to be a smoother flow, where the eye naturally glides from one area to another.
Details
Finally, paying infinite attention to details will bring your room together over the cloque of color, rhythm and balance. This is where your minutia of attention to detail comes into play and can include anything and everything from light switch plates to cupboard handles. Expressing yourself in the details takes away from the cookie cutter image many kitchens share with each other or the drabness of the generic entryway. It’s the details which take the rhythm and balance of your space and truly separates it from every other space.