8 Designer Tricks to Create a Harmonious Look in Your Home

(Credit: Jo Simmons, UK cotributor)

Designers have many strategies for creating a sense of harmony in a home, from repeating patterns to restricting materials. One thing they would agree on is that a harmonious look is not the same as one that’s dull or predictable. Anything from super-bright colors to exposed brickwork, vibrant geometrics and textural tiles can be employed to subtly link the rooms in your home. The important thing is to use them consistently throughout a space to create a pleasant sense of cohesion.

Using a restricted palette of materials gives this London house, designed by architect Brian O’Tuama, a relaxed, cohesive feel. Oak is used throughout and, in the kitchen, it appears in both its natural finish and painted a soft black. It’s paired with Carrara marble on the island countertop and backsplash.

Limit Materials

Upstairs in the family bathroom, that same combination of oak and marble is seen again, this time on a custom vanity, with black accents on the door and window frame.

Oak also adorns the stairs up to the converted loft, and a sinuous handrail picks up the black accents used throughout the house.

Brighten up

Harmonious doesn’t have to mean muted. Bright colors, rolled out boldly from room to room, create a unified style. Color appears in dazzling splashes throughout this house, owned by interior designers Susie and Evros Agathou of Avocado Sweets Design Studio.

In the living space, built-in shelving is painted in a rainbow of zingy shades and combined with cushions, artwork and a rug in similarly eye-grabbing tones.

Upstairs, bright accents are found even in the bedrooms. In this child’s room, a yellow pegboard and matching Tolix chair, alongside patterned curtains, continue the energizing scheme.

Reveal the bones

Leaveingsome of a house’s structural elements on display — its brickwork or steelwork, for instance — can create a sense of harmony if it runs through several rooms.

The brickwork along one wall of his kitchen exposed, painting it simply in fresh white. Dark, minimal cabinetry helps balance its textural look.

Upstairs, there’s more white painted brickwork in the bathroom, where part of an original chimney has been preserved.

Embrace white-out

Perhaps the simplest way to create a sense of harmony in your home is to opt for a classic white backdrop throughout. White walls and ceilings are easy and inexpensive to pull off, and create a blank canvas against which colorful soft furnishings can stand out, as in this living room.

Upstairs, in this child’s bedroom, the fresh white walls and ceiling are boosted by a pale carpet, and the red armchair and yellow pendant light really stand out against all that snowy freshness.

Add thread of black

Black is an incredibly versatile color that really helps to ground a scheme. Use it a little or a lot, from room to room, to achieve a sense of harmony.

Here, in a room , black combines with white, in a classic Scandinavian pairing, and is used boldly on kitchen cabinetry and faucets.

Move over to the living room, though, and it’s deployed more as an accent shade. It crops up on the fireplace, lighting and cushions, tying the spaces together but producing a much lighter effect than in the kitchen.

Go for geometrics

Pick a specific pattern — paisley, floral, herringbone, whatever you like — and then drop it in throughout your home. In this house, patterns feature in most rooms. A hallway laid with black-and-white tiles leads into a music room with a geometric artwork.

At the other end of the music room, the sitting area picks up the theme with a diamond-patterned rug.

In the guest en suite, meanwhile, geometric pattern goes big with these blue-and-white tiles in the shower.

Try textual tiles

Choosing tiles that, while different shapes and colors, deliver the same feeling of texture, helps to link rooms and conjure a feeling of harmony.

Designer Yoko Kloeden used zellige tiles as a backsplash in both the kitchen and the loft en suite (see next photo) in this house. These thick, glazed clay tiles have an uneven finish that bounces the light around beautifully.

In the loft’s tiny bathroom, the zellige tiles give a luxe feel to the shower, while their colors reflect the natural palette used throughout the project.

Show your metal

Pick a metal you love and work it in around your home. In this house, brass light fixtures, faucets and shower heads feature throughout.

Interior designer Celine Erlam of Indie & Co. ensured there was even greater harmony by using the same square brass wall lights in several spots throughout the house, such as here in the dining room.

They also are used in the kitchen…

…and in the hallway.

Tell us: Do you have any ideas for creating a harmonious look? Share your tips and photos in the Comments.