“Rules were made to be broken,” read that t-shirt your parents probably had to talk you out of buying at the mall as a kid. While we would never be so reckless as to prescribe such an antisocial attitude in everyday life, we have some good news. Some of the more rigid rules you thought you had to swear by with interior design aren’t as rigid as you once thought.
Interior design’s marriage of form and function is an ever-evolving one. It is, at its core, a creative pursuit, and that means pushing up against old conventions and precepts, sometimes bending them until they finally break. Are you eager to find out which old rules you can consign to the dustbin of design history? Stay with us and discover a few of the interior design rules you can actually break.
Colors Don’t End at the Ceiling
Professional painters and weekend warriors alike are reluctant to put a fresh coat of paint on a ceiling. Gravity is not one’s friend here, and the rules for design don’t favor the cause, either—conventional wisdom dictates that a white ceiling brightens a room and keeps things simple. If you didn’t before, feel free to break from the conventions here and add color to your ceiling—just make sure you have the drop cloths you’ll need to do it.
Rugs Over Carpeting? Layer Away
In recent years, wall-to-wall carpeting has fallen out of style as homeowners have discovered lovely hardwood floors beneath their carpet or have opted for new, easier-to-clean laminate surfaces. This has meant area and accent rugs coming in to add touches of softness and color. If you don’t have pristine hardwood to reveal or prefer your wall-to-wall carpeting, don’t feel as if area rugs are out of play. You can double up on rugs over your carpet as long as you choose wisely. Select the right rug to provide ideal contrast and texture.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
One truism of interior design has been to make small spaces look bigger, usually through optical trickery, such as using light colors. Forget what you’ve heard—one of the smaller spaces in most homes, the hall bathroom, is a perfect place to embrace coziness with darker tones. By deploying dark-stained woods, luxurious colors, and soft lighting, the humble hall bath can become a hidden treasure. Larger rooms can benefit from rejecting this conventional wisdom, too. After all, they have space to spare.
Woods and Metals: Clash With Confidence
Sticklers for tradition will tell you that you must never mix and match your woods or metals in a room. We’ve moved on from this mandate. One of the interior design rules you can actually break today is this constraining ban on clashing materials. You no longer have to be on an Olympic podium for silver and bronze to coexist, and pale blonde woods can be near rich, dark mahogany without setting off aesthetic alarms. You can finally mix and match with confidence.
