Creating Visual Interest In A Minimalist Design: 4 Simple Steps

Ian Mutuli
Updated on
Ian Mutuli

Ian Mutuli

Founder and Managing Editor of Archute. He is also a graduate architect from The University of Nairobi, Kenya.
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Anyone who’s even remotely interested in any sort of design or decoration must’ve come across the term minimalism at least once. Minimalism has been dominating the design landscape for the last few decades and it doesn’t seem to be fading anytime soon. There are some very good reasons to explain the popularity of minimalism and why people love it so much. It’s majestic, efficient, clean, and it’s not very expensive to implement either. All of these qualities make it very desirable and this is why so many people want to give their home a minimalistic appeal. However, the issue is that minimalism is so simple that newbies don’t know where to start.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at some of the most important things you can do to create a minimalist design in your home. Not only will it make your home look more beautiful, but it’ll also help it stand apart from the others. So without further ado, let’s get to it and find out how you can create a visually interesting minimalist design in your home.

Keep It Simple

The very fundamentals of minimalism lie in its simplicity and efficiency. Rather than focusing on making something attractive by adding all the bells and whistles to it, you should focus on maximizing the value out of even a simple thing. A good example of this can be the furniture and decor in your living room. Many people choose to decorate their living rooms with paintings, a flamboyant couch, a center table that’s equally flamboyant, a fancy rug, and whatever they can find on the face of the earth. However, minimalists tend to keep it as simple as possible and try to decorate with as little as possible. This might seem counterintuitive at first but when you start implementing this tip, you’ll see the difference yourself.

Use Space

Now, this is where you can see the difference between the mindset of a minimalist and a normal person who doesn’t have a clue what minimalism is. Usually, people associate space with emptiness and they try their best to fill it up with all sorts of decorations. However, minimalists know that an empty space has its own charm and they try to use it to enhance the appeal of any room. Most minimalist homes have a lot of open spaces that make you feel like you’re in a much bigger house than it actually is. The only thing you need to remember about space if you want to achieve a minimalistic look is that you should try and make it open, clean, and filled with light.

Reduce the Clutter

When you start out on your journey of minimalism, you’ll have a lot of useless stuff lying around and you’ll be the exact opposite of a minimalist. To be a true minimalist and make your home appear cleaner, you’ll have to get rid of all the things that create clutter. Most people think that this only means discarding their stuff but there’s more to it than just that. You need to get rid of anything that creates visual clutter and this can include even the heavily decorated bedsheets. If you compare normal sheets used by people to these sheets, you’ll understand that even a thing as simple as a bedsheet can make a huge difference. So try and find all the minor things where you can eliminate the visual clutter to achieve that much-desired aesthetic.

Quality Over Quantity

A major issue with minimalism is usually that it doesn’t allow you to place a lot of decorations in your home. This bothers many people as they can’t think of ways to make their homes beautiful without adding unnecessary clutter. However, there’s a way around this issue and it’s to use high-quality decorations, furnishing, and furniture. Since your options are rather limited, you should try and extract the maximum value out of those limited options and that can only be done with decor that’s not substandard. You might’ve needed to cut your costs when you weren’t implementing a minimalist style because of the number of variables to handle, however, minimalism allows you to spend more on a lesser number of things for the best appearance.

These are some of the most important tips that you can implement into your own minimalist journey to achieve the coveted minimalist look. Minimalism is a vast subject and what we’ve discussed is just the tip of the iceberg, there are a lot more things you can learn for free from the infinite resources on the internet. You can keep on learning more about the subject as there’s seemingly no end to it but what we’ve discussed so far will be more than enough to get you started.

Ian Mutuli

About the author

Ian Mutuli

Founder and Managing Editor of Archute. He is also a graduate architect from The University of Nairobi, Kenya.
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