The office has been driving me crazy lately (okay for the last several months!) we worked on it really hard last March and I am in love with how far it’s come. Honestly it was pretttttttty much finished but no matter how hard I tried to convince myself to move on to the next room something was holding me back.
The entire space just didn’t feel balanced.
The wooden desk and wooden secretary balanced out, the pie safe balanced with the office chair and curtains but the big white bookshelves stood out. They were a big white elephant in the room telling me one thing… I need to balance all the whites in this room.
Do your bookshelves ever tell you things like this?
So I set out to think about quick tips to visually balance a room so I could quickly put this room to rest!
Tip 1: Use the Triangle
Okay, I know what you’re thinking… what the heck is the triangle?! This is suppose to be quick and easy, I’m suppose to understand! What does this even mean?!
Well it means that if you have 3 pieces (let’s just say 3 picture frames for demonstration purposes) if you’re trying to balance a room you wouldn’t put them ants on a log style one, two, three all in a row. No you’d space them out evenly around the room… so that they form a triangle.
It creates movement y’all. If your eye lands on a large blue pie safe on one wall and then you spot a blue tufted office chair across the room and then you spot blue file bins below the window… the blue color just carried your eye around the room. Movement, balance… the triangle.
So I have a triangle of blue and even a triangle of warm wooden tones. What I need is a triangle of white to balance the bookshelves!
Tip 2: Use Color and Light to Brighten your Space
The best part about balance is keeping the lights and darks in check… I wanted to add a bit of white to balance the bookshelves so we needed a dark spot to add our white. The white will balance out the dark.
Like the force… who’s going to see the new Star Wars movie?
Anyways, I got sidetracked. I decided to add a new print over the secretary on the wall across from the bookshelf. A white print would balance out the dark wood of the secretary beautifully.
Plus white has an added bonus of reflecting light and this corner behind the door is particularly dark. A white print will help bounce light back into the room making it feel lighter and brighter… which sounds perfect!
I picked this fun cow print from Minted… as an avid Miss Mustard Seed reader I absolutely love her cow paintings! So I just had to have my very own cow! Look how pretty she is! More importantly look how much light she bounces back into the room!
Can you see the difference from the picture up above?
The main point is to keep in mind lights and darks when adding color to your space. If you have a dark floor, a light rug will compliment it. If you have a dark couch a light colored throw blanket will help break up the space while reflecting light back into the room.
Light v.s. dark y’all. It’s like yin and yang they balance each other out.
Tip 3: Use Cohesive Pieces throughout your Space
Okay so in this particular room we have blues, gray’s, whites and warm wooden tones. That’s quite a bit of variety! When putting together a mood board for this space I tried to keep alll the parts equal. Think about them as children… one child can’t have a bigger cookie than the other right?
So each color should be evenly represented throughout the space. That’s why we’re adding all the white! With a bit of white across the room the white will be balanced in a way it wasn’t before… and each child will have an equally sized cookie.
So decide on your color palette: think 2-3 main colors along with woods or product finishes (stainless steel, copper, etc). Once you’ve decided on your color palette try to represent each color equally throughout the space for a balanced look and feel!
If you need a visual making a mood board is the perfect way to see how all of the elements are going to come together (if you need help I put together a post last year on creating your perfect mood board)
In the meantime I’ll be lounging in my french script chair enjoying my balanced office.
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Your cow print is so cool! And I do see how it lightened up when you exchanged it for the darker frames.
🙂 gwingal
Great tips as we finish up our office! Thank you.
Hello Betsy, all the 3 tips were quick and easy. I really liked it. These tips actually worked for me very well. Now my office is visually balanced. Thanks for sharing this amazing content.
I’ll have to keep these tips in mind when I move into my new house. I hope you’ll come visit! I’ll have 2 guest rooms.