Design Basics: Scale and Proportion

Hello Fellow Design Enthusiasts,

Whether you’re starting from scratch decorating a new home, or you’re reinventing a space in an older home, a basic understanding of the principles of design will help you achieve a successful outcome.

In one scene that plays out often, a new client calls for design help with the sound of panic in her voice.  The family has just received delivery of the new furniture they selected, and the new pieces (usually oversized) do not work in the room as intended.  Moving existing furnishings into a new home can also pose a challenge for some homeowners.  The furnishings that seemed to work well in the old home don’t look or feel the same in the new home.  In many cases, the design principles at play are scale and proportion. 

In design, scale refers to the size of the furnishings in relation to the space in which they are placed.  Proportion addresses how the individual elements relate to each other within the space.   A basic understanding of the design principles of scale and proportion and some careful planning will help you avoid making costly purchasing mistakes.

Considering Scale

First, before purchasing any new furnishings, consider the room itself.  Is it a large space with high ceilings and tall floor-to-ceiling windows?  Or is the room smaller in dimension with 8-foot ceilings?  The scale of a room dictates both the size and the number of pieces that will work within a space. 

Have you ever walked into a large room with cathedral ceilings and tall windows and felt uncomfortable, like you didn’t want to sit down and relax?  Large-scale rooms can feel formal because they are not in human scale.  To bring down the scale of a voluminous room, the furnishings must also be taller, larger, and heavier in visual weight.  Large rooms often require more than one seating area or zone to break the room up into smaller parts.   Adding elements like tall trees, chandeliers that drop down into the space, and decorative moldings to create a lower sight line or to break up an expanse of wall, all help to bring the scale of a room into human proportions.  These design tricks help to ground a large room by tying the people in the room to the upper reaches of the space.

A small or average-sized room has its own set of challenges.  Generally, smaller-scale furnishings work better in a small space.  But using one or two large-scale items within a small room can work, if the rest of the room is pared down and the large-scale pieces are in balance with the other furnishings in the room.   Try some of these designer tips for creating a greater sense of height and volume in a small space: hang window hardware close to the ceiling and run curtain panels down to the floor to create the illusion of height; tape off and paint vertical stripes on the walls to carry the eye from floor to ceiling; paint the ceiling one color lighter than the chip selected for the walls to soften the contrast between walls and ceiling; and continue the same flooring throughout a small home to create a continuum for the eye.

Working with Proportion

When selecting furnishings, we also must consider how each individual element relates to the others in the space.  If one piece is immense or oversized, it can throw the balance of a room completely off.  The same can be said for a petite piece in a room full of larger scale furnishings.  

A small-scale armchair with turned legs placed across from a large-scale leather sofa creates a sense of imbalance because the pieces are not in proportion.  The physical volume of the chair does not match up to the volume of its counterpart.  But place a second armchair next to the first with a round table between the pair, and now the physical volume of the grouping is more in proportion with the heavy, leather sofa. 

Picture a bud vase with a single rose sitting on a dining table that seats eight people; the arrangement is obviously out of proportion with the size of the table.  That same bud vase would be right at home on a cafe table for two.   Now picture a grouping of seven bud vases in the center of the table for eight.  Even though the bud vases are small, when grouped together, their mass is more in proportion with the larger table.

Remember, when it comes to the design principles of scale and proportion - think relative!  Check in next Tuesday when we’ll discuss the design principles of symmetrical and asymmetrical balance.

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