Home is that cosy place you yearn to go to after a long day. A comfortable home is, however, made. It takes a combination of things like décor, furniture and organisation to pull it off. An expert gives tips on how to make your home fun and neat; Adrian Innocent, a construction manager and interior designer in Kigali, says that a place where one lives is a basic human need and a home is where majority of people spend most of their time. According to him, you can have a home office but a home is not an office. “When clients approach me to manage their design and construction process, they are most intrigued by the exterior of the house, and overlook the fact that they don’t spend most of their time outside the house. We live and spend most of our time indoors. Having a beautiful and functional interior design space will improve and contribute to a more relaxing home. Space is the area between objects in the room,” he says. The interior designer adds that you can even help set the mood of the household, but above all, have a functional living space because the exterior is mostly about what you want people to see. He says, the exterior is partly for you and strangers or by passers-by, but the interior design is mostly for you, your household, friends, and family. To him, in pursuit of a more soothing home, knowing what you want as a client is key. For example, why should you have arm sofas for people who don’t take naps in the living room? If you’re not the kind, it’s better not to have arm chairs. He says that the schedule or lifestyle of you and your family should determine what your interior will look like. Innocent is of the view that what is relaxing for you might be stressful for others. From this, you can identify what you cannot live without or what you can live with. Say you’re a person who carries lots of documents with you home, then storage is vital. Your style can draw you down to the style of design you also like whether contemporary, traditional or modern, among others. Steps to a soothing home Innocent adds that after enlisting all the items you will ever want to have in your house, apply the principles and the different elements of design in the placement of your items to the room. This may require you to invest a little time in reading and understanding these elements and principles, or hire an interior designer to help you choose the right colours, texture, furniture and so forth, he notes. Innocent also points out that if you can’t hire one, there are various sources over the internet like Pinterest, where you can borrow ideas. But even still, you would need a professional to guide you in this particular step. According to Innocent, professional advice or research will guide you in knowing what type, size, colour, and texture you need. Or how you can enhance your existing furniture or new items through balancing, uniting, harmonising, emphasising and choosing the right form and shape of the items. To him, knowing what height artworks can be placed or the size of the rug to buy and so forth, really comes in handy and helps in the placement of your furniture. “Unless your style is very high-end, you don’t need to buy expensive artworks. I believe in using the normal fair priced items and creating a ‘wow aesthetic effect’. It’s not about the price but mostly how it appears in the space and its functional purpose,” he says. Innocent urges to shun putting the stuff you rarely use in your space, noting that if you might need it once in a while, you can keep it in storage. Keep your room less busy Innocent says every space can be busy or calm depending on whether you applied the principles and elements of interior design in the space. For the living space, having items placed according to the elements of design such as lines, form, space, shapes, colour and texture, rightly following the basic principles of design, can see you off with a beautiful and less busy room. Must haves for a beautiful living room Innocent says that any living room must have the right colours and lighting whether artificial or natural lighting from large window openings. Artworks and art pieces are another thing to really consider in today’s living rooms. Creating a peaceful bedroom atmosphere Innocent says most couples agree that the bedroom remains the heart of the house, at least it stills holds its top position in most homes. Having a decluttered bedroom will by perception declutter your mind. Having enough natural light, lighting and big windows is vital. He adds that the choice of your bedroom colours will play also a very big part in a peaceful bedroom, size and placement of furniture and also your choice of curtains. Why you need to balance your living room The interior designer emphasises that with visual balance, it properly distributes the room items. Imagine having a tiny centre table with very large sofa seating, it’s not neat, at all. You can also balance your room with colour. With space, Innocent says, you need to arrange all your items of interest in that particular space. Emphasis is mostly the centre of attention. It can be more than one point of focus but at least, one of them should be the main point of focus. You need rhythm; here you are basically connecting different elements so that you have a natural unhindered visual flow. You can repeat items or colours. And with unit, this is that sense of perception that everything in that space belongs there and is part of the whole space, Innocent says.
