This is one topic I’ve been itching to write about for awhile. Scale is like lighting – oh so important in design but often overlooked or placed on the backburner. In reality, I think that scale is at the top of the list when it comes to achieving success in a room.
So, what is scale and why is it so important? Scale is the proper balance of all materials in a room. By this, I mean, that all elements complement each and every other element in the space. This applies not only to furniture (the biggest mistake with scale) but rugs, fabric, accessories and draperies – to name but a few.
Every element brought into a room needs to be examined with a critical eye. It doesn’t matter if you fall in love with something. If the piece is too big for the room or the fabric overpowers a chair or the rug is too small for the space – it will never complement the space or the other elements in the room. Your eye will instinctively know that something is off – you may not know what it is but nine times out of ten, it will be related to scale.
The most common mistakes made with scale are:
1) Furniture is either too big or too small for a room. It’s very important not to buy a piece of furniture just because you love it. The bigger decision is whether it’s the right size piece for the overall room and how it will look and feel with other pieces in the room. So often, I see these huge sectionals in a room that shouldn’t have more than a sofa and chair. People are too oriented to what big, padded andcomfortable. The problem is that these big, overstuffed pieces quickly overtake a room. The other extreme is to have lots of little pieces of furniture pushed against the wall to create that huge wasteland of space in the middle.
2) Not considering every piece in relationship to every other piece is the second biggest mistake that people make. Nothing looks worse than a large sofa matched up with a small coffee table and an area rug that looks like a postage stamp in the room. A rug should fill a seating area so that every piece of furniture in that grouping at least has its front legs on the rug. A coffee table, put in front of a sofa, should be 2/3 the length of a sofa. So, an 84″ sofa should have a coffee table 48″ in length. Or, if you like using bunching tables, consider two 22″ square tables with six inches in between.
3) Along these same lines, people are often thrilled when they finally find the right color and pattern of fabric for a chair, bench, sofa or whatever. What people don’t often consider is the size of the pattern may not look right with other fabrics in the room. You never want to have two similar sized patterns fighting each other. A general rule of thumb is to have one plain, one large and two smaller scale prints in a room.
4) Artwork is a big mistake with scale. People find a piece of art they like and then hang it in a space that doesn’t do it justice. The size of the art should be in proportion to the wall size. The same goes for side tables, accessories, mirrors and even draperies.
5) It’s important to carry a tape measure with you when you shop and to do a scale drawing of each room so you know exactly the dimensions you cannot exceed for every item you buy. If this sounds like too much effort or you’re not comfortable doing this alone, this is the perfect time to call an interior design and pay for a space plan. A good designer shouldn’t take more than 1-2 hours to space plan a room. The couple hundred dollars you pay him or her will save you thousands in buying pieces that simply won’t work in your space. I often see rooms in homes filled with impulse or sale purchases that never worked in the space they thought. These “mistakes” can often run into the thousands of dollars. A scale drawing also keeps you focused on exactly the size piece you need. That way, you can avoid even looking at everything in the store.
Tomorrow – more thoughts on scale.
