Design Basics Series: Harmony, Unity & Variety

White unifies the interior, while red accents add variety and interest.

An interior can be compared to a jigsaw puzzle, where a variety of diverse elements – furniture, lights, flooring, wall treatments, soft furnishings, etc. – are combined together to form a composition. Harmony is a design principle that deals with the pleasing combination of those elements. An interior denotes harmony when all its diverse components relate to each other and to the space that contains them in an attractive, pleasing way.

While balance unifies the space through the careful arrangements of both similar and dissimilar elements, harmony relies on the selection of elements that share a common trait or characteristic (shape, colour, texture, material, pattern, etc. )

The repetition of this common characteristic gives unity to the interior and provides visual harmony. A simple way to achieve harmony, for example, is to use a monochromatic, or analogous, colour scheme; another way is to use similar textures to give a cohesive look to the space.

Don’t overdo unity, though: if you use too many elements of similar traits,  you could end up with a unified interior that lacks interest – a boring composition.

To avoid this, you need to introduce variety, giving the eye a number of different shapes, colours, textures and details to look at.  But don’t add too much variety just for the sake of interest: although necessary,  variety  carried to an extreme can result in chaos – the very opposite of harmony!

You could say that harmony in interior design is the result of a careful balance between order and disorder, between unity and variety.

Different details in the dining chairs add variety, while the common shapes and colour provide unity. On the sofa, cushions with different patterns (variety) unified by the same colours.

You can introduce variety in an interior in many  ways: you could vary orientation, size, colour, detail characteristics, texture.

If you want to achieve a harmonious interior in a simple way, first you can unify the space choosing a majority of elements that share a common characteristic, then you can add a few, carefully chosen elements that have a variety of unique,  individual traits (your accents).

If you have many dissimilar elements, you could balance their variety by grouping them together (e.g. different chairs arranged around a dining table), or by placing them along a common line or plane (e.g.   different armchairs  placed below a suspended ceiling). You can reinforce the visual unity of the arrangement with a contour along the elements (e.g. a rug).

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In the next post of the Design Basics series I’ll talk about Rhythm and its role in interior design. If you liked this article, please leave a comment, and share the link with others. To receive your free updates and make sure you don’t miss any post, subscribe to Positively Beauty here.

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Image Source: 1 – Bolig; 2, 5 – Living Etc.; 3 – Skona Hem; 4 – AtCasa.

Tagged as: design basics, interior design