In my previous post I started a ‘training’ session of sorts on how to create a well put together space in your home. I used to train and certify Home Stagers and many of the things I taught them applied to a home for living as well as a home for selling. My previous post focused on focal points (pun intended)! 😊 Now lets take a look at balance.

How do you create balance in a room? It can be done through the placement of your furniture, accessories or even with color. Many times it is all of the above. I really think balance is about the feeling you get when you are in the room. Balance does not mean you have all items perfectly symmetrical because you will never have the exact same items or size of items on both side of a room; nor would you want to.

A perfect way to describe a room out of balance is when all the large pieces of furniture in a room are set up to face the TV.  What happens is that all the heavy pieces get lined up on one wall and the TV sits alone on the opposite wall. The weight of the room literally feels like it is tipping to one side. You want to arrange furniture so that it is not all about the TV all the time, then use other furniture and accessories to balance the visual weight within the room.

There is also a sense of balance you get with bookshelves or the mantel of a fireplace. Again, you don’t want everything identical on each side but you don’t want, for example, all books on one side and all accessories on the other. The side with all the books would obviously feel too heavy. You want to disperse items amongst the shelves using varying heights to create balance as well.

Let’s take a look at this room below:

The chair floating to the left of the TV creates balance so that the right side of the room doesn’t feel heavy with the weight of the fireplace and chair. It also counters the weight from the other direction because if the wall had just the TV and fireplace it would feel light with all the heavy furniture on the other side of the room. Do you feel how that would be?

Also let’s take a look at the fireplace, there are not tall items on both the left side of the mantel and the right side. That can be done but it may also be boring. The tall vase with reeds on the floor to the right of the fireplace brings balance to the whole area. The floor lamp behind the chair on the left brings in height to counter the height on the right side. Do you see it?

So for me, I just did this without thinking. It is ingrained within me because it is what I do and do it all the time. It is just automatic and took me maybe 10 minutes to pull together visually. That’s me. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it balanced on the first try. Play with it, pull in things from other rooms and see how it feels, move things around, experiment. When will you know it is balanced? It will feel just right, like the Goldilocks nursery rhyme, you keep trying until it is just right. 😊

I hope you learned a little bit about balance and if you want to check out my previous post about “focal points” click the link. My next blog will be all about creating Continuity and Flow!