The way we decorate our homes says a lot about who we are. The pieces you choose reflect your personality and preferences. Are you trying to evoke a sense of warmth and comfort, or are you more focused on structure and modernity? Furniture is obviously a major player in the final product of your interior design and one that you can use to make or break any environment within your home. The visual appeal, the feel, and — in the case of leather — even the smell of your furniture can convey a lot about your vision. Adding the right furniture to a room in your house can bring your style goals into reality, inspiring feelings through multiple senses: a look, a touch, and — in the case of leather — sometimes even a smell can convey the desired impression.
Leather home furnishings are timeless, potent, and beautiful, yet they can be difficult and frustrating to place in a room correctly. If you have a rustic leather sofa or are interested in introducing rustic leather armchairs into your home, you need to know the tricks of the interior design trade. By taking a look at four key aspects, you’ll be able to create a seamless environment around your favorite leather piece.
Style Matters
Creating a seamless interior design requires consistency. By settling on a style or theme, you can ensure the room will look clean and purposeful, rather than impulsive and messy. Leather furniture is increasingly associated with the rustic and western styles: traditionally made and dyed cowhide reminds homeowners of their connection to nature while also providing a professional look that only gets better with age. As a result, they blend perfectly with other rustic accents (such as the classic Navajo-style patterned rugs and throw blankets).
Themes are necessary even in the smallest of interior design projects. Home is supposed to be relaxing and inviting; if you have postmodern, vintage, and rustic style pieces all floating in the same space, it will feel chaotic and confusing. Once you know your theme, you’ll be able to focus on how best to realize it.
Brighten and Lighten
Leather sofas and rustic leather armchairs tend to be quite rich and dark in color. While the tones certainly inspire warmth, they can sometimes be a bit too heavy: instead of a statement-making piece of furniture to match a statement-making room, you have a lumbering giant. Since balance is the key to any successful interior design ambition, you can offset this weightiness by brightening up the room. Using a pale wall color, lighter-toned throws and pillows, or light-colored rustic furniture (such as weathered wood) can lift the weight of that laden leather sofa.
This has the added benefit of drawing attention to your gorgeous leather piece; when dark is surrounded by light, the effect is a focusing — our eyes are naturally drawn to the piece that stands out. If your leather sofa or rustic leather armchairs are the centerpieces of your den, friends, and relatives simply won’t be able to ignore them!
Break it Up
If light just isn’t your preference, you can always create balance by giving your sofa some room to breathe. Separating the piece from other furniture can help to reduce its visual weight and make the atmosphere less stuffy. This could be as simple as finding another place in your home for them or as fun as shopping for new ones; supplementing upholstered chairs can break the monotony of the style (we want consistency, not matchy-matchy) and offer a less cluttered experience.
Balance is, again, the key here. Pieces that are too similar (either in design, color, or material) tend to lose their individuality among the repetition, while pieces that are too different often lose the strength of the theme and cause confusion. By finding furniture that is different (but not entirely unique or severe), you can make that seam disappear.
Be Conscious of Space
Space is one of the most important aspects of home design. Understanding how much space each piece needs — both to itself and from other furniture — is crucial in creating a sound and unobstructed layout. If your rustic leather sofa is sitting by its lonesome in the corner, it will unintentionally dominate the entire room; if it’s surrounded by other pieces, especially leather ones, it will get lost in the fray.
As always, the solution comes down to balance. Take a look at the home furnishings you have to work with and consider how best you can arrange them to keep that brand new (or well-loved) leather sofa as the focal point of the room. And feel free to play around with it — you’ll undoubtedly have rugs, pillows, blankets, lamps, and all manner of personal decor to explore.
At the end of the day, your home is your own; whether you favor classic or trendy, modern or rustic furniture, the most important thing is that you’re content and comfortable; if crafting the perfect living room design around your rustic leather armchairs is what does that, we’re glad we could help.