It is important to make your living spaces appear well-designed and cohesive, rather than haphazard. One of the simplest ways to achieve that goal is to make sure that every room has a focal point. If you analyze the photographs from your favorite home decorating magazine, you will quickly be able to pinpoint the rooms’ focal points. Decorating around a focal point is one of the easiest ways to make your home look like it belongs in a magazine.
Some rooms have clear focal points before you even furnish them. A window that looks out onto a spectacular view is one example of an obvious focal point. A dramatic fireplace is another. In some rooms a dazzling chandelier creates a focal point. In other rooms an interesting architectural detail could become a focal point.
Walk into the various rooms in your home and pay attention to where your focus is first drawn. This is your current focal point. If you can’t decide where it is, it means you most likely don’t have one at all or else you have too many of them.
In general, rooms should have one focal point and the rest of the furnishings should be arranged to emphasize it. That isn’t to say that you can’t have both a fireplace AND a window that looks out onto an incredible view- you surely can. The trick is to pick which feature you’d rather have as your focal point, and arrange the rest of your furniture to comfortably flow around the focal point.
Do not despair if you cannot find your focal point. It is not that unusual for a room to lack a view, or a fireplace, or even any architecturally interesting details. If you don’t have a focal point at all, it’s an opportunity to be creative and design one! There are many practical ways to do so.
One approach that is becoming increasingly popular is to create what’s called a “Feature wall”. A feature wall is one wall that stands out from the other walls in some way. It could be through use of a different color of paint or a different texture or even a unique wallpaper. Feature walls are usually created around the most dramatic or obvious wall in the room; for example, the feature wall in the bedroom would usually be the wall that is directly behind the headboard of your bed. Adding a piece of original art directly overtop can really tie the whole look together.
In fact one of the most obvious ways to create a focal point is choosing original art to design your focal point around. Original art makes an outstanding focal point for many reasons. It will often be the most colorful part of the room and can easily become the center of attention. Art expresses its owner’s personality and vision in a way that few other objects can. It can be spectacular, engaging, entertaining, calming, intriguing, mysterious, energizing, puzzling, fun, whimsical, or any combination thereof. Attention naturally gravitates toward it! As a focal point, artwork is a natural.
To view original art that would make a spectacular focal point in your home, click here.
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