Why Include Negative Space in Your Interior Design

Are you a regular Pella follower? If so, you’ve probably heard about including negative space around your property. If not, negative space is the blank, uncluttered breathing room around an object. Designing with this in mind can in fact make a very big difference in your interior.

Here, we’ll dive into why this feature is crucial and provide practical tips to pull it off in your own home. With simple and small tweaks, you can actually use this trick to open up your designs.

Negative Spaces - Easier to Appreciate

Being experienced in the industry, we have seen countless homes and have found that it takes a combination of many elements to take our breath away. This can include the furniture, drapes, art or the color palette that was chosen. Overall, we would argue that the use of negative space, often forgotten, makes an enormous difference.

There is a psychological basis for our reasoning. Every time when we enter a new space, the brain processes the room as a whole first. By reducing clutter, you can allow visitors (and yourself!) to better focus in on individual design elements and aesthetic points. In fact, on average we react more positively to rooms that feature a lot of negative space as they are easier for our brains to categorize.

Improved Functionality

When it comes to designing your room, there are functional reasons for favoring negative space. Simply put, uncluttered living environments are easier to navigate than rooms that are hampered by excessive design elements and objects. Keep it simple and clean.

Make your Designs Pop

In the end, it is always important to think about the negative space from an aesthetic perspective. You can look at it this way – your overall design is a combination of every single element that you chose to include in the space and every single element that you decided to leave out. When you incorporate the right amount of negative space into your particular design, it’s like striking the perfect balance between the two.

Often, this will be your last step. It can be really helpful to think of adding the negative space as a final edit to your interior design. This finishing touch will help draw attention to strong design pieces and enhance your aesthetic.

Now that you understand the role of negative space, we can address how to make it work in your own interior. Every space is different in its own way, but we have some simple tips to get you started.

When you put together the rooms in your home, keep these points in mind.

Double Down – It is wiser to invest in design elements that have both a functional purpose and an aesthetic value.

Function First – Functional elements like furniture are obviously important. Let them be the foundation of your design.

Clear Pathways – As mentioned, you must be able to navigate through the entire room without any issues.

Declutter – Self-explanatory, yes. But we’ll say it again: if there is excessive clutter in the room, try to tackle it.

Be an Editor – If you cannot decide whether a particular piece fits in with the rest of your design, try to think in terms of added value. Does this one piece contribute anything to the space? If the answer is no, consider nixing this item.

Think of Added Value – If you cannot decide if a particular piece fits with the rest or not, it is important that you think in terms of the added value. Think if that particular piece adds anything to space. If yes, it is better that you keep it. And if not, leave it out.

As we’ve seen, negative space is an overlooked component in most professional-looking designs. We highly recommend that you treat it as an essential design feature. Once you do, you’ll be surprised to see how much of a difference small changes can make.

Have we convinced you yet? Will you make a point of including negative space in the future? If you’re on board, feel free to share your experience in the comments below.