The Power Of Scale
Sometimes you walk into a room and something's just not right--you can feel it in your bones but you can't isolate any one piece of the room that makes you feel that way. And then other times a room gives off a subtle pleasant vibe that attracts people to spend time there.
This hard-to-identify factor that can make or break a room is called scale. Scale is how the objects in the room relate spatially to each other and to the overall room. A room that is out of scale is like a song that lacks harmony or rhythm. There is no governing principle that draws everything together. In today's post I will explore how one recent project demonstrates the power of scale.
It may seem like a minor thing to most people--a rug a few inches too small or a sofa that takes up too much space--but it is perhaps the most crucial element in a room. Oftentimes with just a few tweaks of scale you can completely change a space. One of our recent projects dubbed “Wayne Transformer” shows how a few changes in the scale of items in the room can vastly improve a space both visually and functionally.
So let’s break down the scale issues that we started with in our Wayne project and what we did to improve the space. Here are the before pictures of the space above. When you look at the space it seems impossible to fit any more furniture in this nook area or create any usable space at all! The contractors proposed to add a five foot addition to give the family more room. We had other plans.
First, this fireplace is hugely oversized for the space. It was actually 3 Feet deep and completely took over so much usable space. The second thing was that the ceilings were not high enough to accommodate such a high mantle. The ceilings were 8 ft and the mantle was close to 5 ft high. Eliminating this massive oversized fireplace gave us significant space to work with, but more importantly, removing the over-scaled item put the room back into perspective and made it feel much bigger. Also having such a large fireplace with very little space between the ceiling and the mantle threw off the proportion of the TV. It made it look like it was huge, but in reality it was a normal and appropriate sized TV for the space as you can see if the “after” pictures.
In the family room there also was three feet of closets that lined the left wall. They were empty and not used by the clients. We opened up the closets to be part of the family room and added another two feet that was previously not used.
An additional scale issue in this space was the size of the rug. The rug was too small for the space and made the area feel small. Rug scale is one of the most crucial and often the most neglected parts of the home. Rugs are the building blocks and the foundation of any room. If you had too small a rug even if everything else is perfect the room will feel off. If you have a rug that is too large the furniture will feel like it is lost at sea. The rug in the new design broke the room up and created multiple useable areas that we later made functional.
Next, in the nook area of the room there was an oversized ottoman that made this area seem completely unusable. In reality it was just not the right scale for the space. In its same place we were able to put a 6’ by 5’ banquette that can accommodate 2-3 people comfortably along with a side chair for a great nook for cocktails.
All of these tweaks saved the clients significant amounts of money that would have previously gone to an addition (siding, roof, new foundation, etc.) and could now be dedicated to furnishing the rooms.
Another thing to keep in mind especially in open spaces is that you need zones of activity. Most people mess up the scale in open areas by just putting bigger furniture into an open space which is not necessarily the answer. In reality you want to create “zones of activity” to fill in the space. Bigger furniture will not make it better. Putting more appropriately scaled pieces will make it better.
Scale, as you can see in the Wayne project, is the secret ingredient of interior design that everyone can instinctively sense, even if they’ve never heard of the concept. Now that I have divulged a great secret of the interior design business, however, I should include a disclaimer. Scale is an art and not a science. There are no hard and fast rules that tell you exactly what size is appropriate for a given piece. Rather a sense of scale is something that you cultivate over time by studying many different kinds of spaces. So next time you walk into your living room or office or kitchen, take a closer look at the scale, and you may be surprised how a few tweaks can improve the feel and functionality of the space.