A good interior designer will encourage home decorators to break the rules but before you can do that, you must understand the rule itself. Following are four decorating rules we think should be broken and the best way to do just that.
1.How to hang your curtains
It’s true that there are very specific rules on how to hang curtains. For example, you want a curtain rod that’s six inches wider and installed 12 inches higher than your window frame. This makes the window look bigger and helps bring in as much natural light as possible. However, this rule can be broken! The experts recommend that you can definitely hang your curtains higher than this but don’t go lower. Nobody likes too-short curtains.
2.How to determine how much paint you need to buy
Figuring out how much paint you need when painting a room seems hard, but there is a rule for this. In general, a gallon of paint is going to cover about 400 square feet. Measure to see how tall your ceiling is, how long your walls are, and how wide they are. Remember that you’re going to need at least two coats and you’ll want a little bit more than this formula allows because you’ll need touchups. Do you want to break this rule? Just paint the lower half or your wall and leave the top half wall.
3.How to hang art at the right height
If you’ve ever looked at art in a room and thought that it just didn’t seem hung well, then it’s likely it was too high. Art should be hung about six – nine inches above a piece of furniture or at gallery height, which is about 57 inches from the ground. To break this rule, lean art against a wall or against a piece of furniture. We never recommend hanging art higher than eye level but leaning it against something in this way gives a more casual look.
4.How to create a color palette
The pros will tell you not to match everything in a room. For example, if you have blue and white striped curtains, you don’t want to add blue and white striped rugs, couches, etc. That said, you can break this rule by adding differing patterns in the same color. In this example, you might have blue and white striped curtains with blue and white polka dotted pillows.
