Harmony at Home: Create a Design Connection Across Rooms

The rooms in Diana Marsh‘s Ann Arbor home are lovely on many levels. She absolutely nails many design principles, like symmetry and balance, in the individual spaces, making each room an inspiring composition. But something else stood out to me as I scrolled through the photos of her home; she simultaneously created connections across the rooms, upping the harmony of her home.

There are approximately zero rules that state you can’t have a different decor theme for each and every room in your home. (In fact this Nashville home shows how fun it can be!) But it is more challenging to make your decor vision work in a harmonious way across very visually different spaces, so figuring out how to use decor elements to create a connection from room to room can definitely up your success.

Creating visual unity throughout your home is NOT the same as designing every room with the same color palette or design scheme. It’s not about making your home one homogeneous bore. It’s not avoiding one-of-a-kind design statement pieces.

It IS thinking about how each room relates to the others. And it’s considering the views within your home, such as what can you see from one room through a doorway into another room. It’s about echoing colors and textures. Creating design cohesion in a home can create sense and order, and ultimately, make a home feel good.

1. Sit in multiple places in a room and look through into connecting rooms.
If your view doesn’t include any similar design elements – either colors or patterns or textures – you might consider making some changes.

2. Choose a design element from one of the spaces and echo it in another room.

This doesn’t always involve new purchases or total color scheme overhauls – sometimes its about moving items from one room to another or a small project such as repainting a single piece or adding a throw or other textile.

For example, if you have an accent color in your living room, try adding a splash of it in your kitchen or dining room with small accessories. You can also get more playful with this idea by giving design elements a new spin when you incorporate them into a different room. In Diana’s home, for example, black and white patterns are a motif that can be found in various rooms, but it’s not the same black and white pattern.

A cohesively designed home has a house-wide harmony that comes from the feeling that each room flows into one another effortlessly. And in some cases, it can actually amplify statement pieces — you can make a design element that you particularly want to feature stand out more because its echoed in another room.