Interior Design Guidelines - Room Color Mood Function and Harmony

At Sheffield we teach our students a simple Three-Step Method for designing every room they create:

A successful room is functional.
A successful room expresses a mood.
A successful room exhibits a sense of harmony.

This simple Three-Step Method is the secret of every Interior ever designed. We teach our students to consider these three steps every time they look at a room. You'll find the great home decorating ideas in our Room of the Month series as well as in the other interior design tips on this site helpful in creating outstanding room designs..

When our students mail in their interior design project for analysis by their instructor, the instructor starts by commenting on these three Guidelines. Of course, the instructor analyzes other elements of the project too – decor, layout, furniture, style etc. But the key to good home decor – and the essential element of every great Interior design - is adherence to these three Guidelines.

How do they work? How can you apply them? It's beyond the scope of this Web site to teach you every nuance, but you will get an inkling from the Room-of-the-Month Analysis that follows.

Room of the Month Interior Design Guidelines:
Airy and Open Bedroom

Click photo for larger view

Let the sun shine in! That is what this bedroom seems to be singing out to visitors. For our Room of the Month, we've chosen to analyze this open and airy bedroom, using the Sheffield School of Interior Design Guidelines: function, mood and harmony.

Because this bedroom is so large, it can serve more than one function. In this case, the designer has chosen to use the bedroom as both a place for sleeping and as a sitting room. You can see in the far rear of the photograph that two white chairs have been placed side by side, to allow for a comfortable conversation area. Between the chairs sits a small wooden table, for holding a drink or a book.

In the foreground, you can see the king-sized bed, offering a super-comfortable place for sleeping, with functional end tables on either side of the bed, so that both people have a lamp and a place for a book. All of this functionality helps the design of this room conform to our first interior decorating guideline.

Another interior decorating guideline is the mood of the room. The mood here is obviously bright and open. It's also elegantly casual. The rough wood of the trim on the windows and doors, the wood headboard and chunky blanket chest all give the room the feel of a mountain lodge, and we can just see out the windows enough to see that indeed, this house is set in the mountains.

However, this country feeling is counter-balanced by the elegance of the preponderance of white in the room. The long white drapes, the white comforter and pillow shams, all bring in a feeling that's more formal.

The only thing we'd add in that area would be a coffee table; there room has plenty of room for one, and would complete the look of that area.

However, the whole room harmonizes beautifully, (the last of Sheffield School's interior decorating guidelines) because the color tones in the all the wooden pieces are the same; a mahogany piece here would throw the harmony off, but as it is, the wood species and colors are similar enough so that nothing disrupts the unity of the line and color in this room.

It may seem easy at first to get whites to harmonize, but in actuality they can vary a good deal. Here, attention has been paid to the tones of the whites, so that the comforter harmonizes with the curtains and with the chairs. The carpet is also white, but with a touch of beige blended in, making it just different enough from the other whites that dominate the room.

Finally, all that white allows the eye to be drawn to the true focal point of this room, the view out the windows. When you have a striking view like this, you want to allow it to be the room's main attention-grabber.

This room really sings, and it allows the view to sing as well.

–Sarah Van Arsdale

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Room of the Month Interior Design Guidelines:Airy and Open Bedroom

Room of the Month Interior Design Guidelines:
Airy and Open Bedroom