Minimalism is one of the most important architectural achievements of the 20th century. Measured and simplified while still being inviting, this style is charming in almost any space. With less clutter to wade through and mentally process, the innate beauty of every piece of furniture or picture in the home really begins to stand out.
Steps
Step 1. Change one room at a time
Unless you've recently moved into a house, it's hard to simplify an entire property in one go. Focus on a camera and let that be your goal for now. Use it to inspire you to make the next room minimalist, and the next again. Then do the same outside!
Step 2. Start with the furniture
The greatest things in any room are furniture, so it's always best to start simplifying a room by paying attention to these pieces. The fewer elements there are (of course with common sense in choosing), the better. Think about which furniture to eliminate without sacrificing comfort and livability. Select some simple and discreet pieces (in the image we have the example of a minimalist coffee table) with solid and muted colors.
Step 3. Keep only the essentials
When looking at your furniture or anything else in the room, ask yourself if the item is really essential. If you can live without it, get rid of it. Try to leave only the basics in the room: you can always add a few more elements in addition to the inevitable ones later. Keep the whole house design on one sheet and make it as simple as possible initially, with the necessary components, and then slowly add decorations to your taste.
Step 4. Clear the floors
Except for the furniture, your floors should be totally free. Nothing should clog the soil, nothing should be stacked, nothing should be stored on the ground. Once you have chosen your essential furniture, remove all unnecessary things from the floor, you can donate them, throw them away or find a place to keep them out of sight.
Step 5. Clear the surfaces
The same goes for all flat surfaces. Don't put anything on them, except a couple of simple decorations. Give, throw or find containers to store these items. This action will make everything much more minimal in appearance.
Step 6. Clear the walls
Some people hang everything on the walls. This doesn't apply to a minimalist home. Clear the walls, you can only keep a couple of simple good quality paintings.
Step 7. Set things aside so they don't distract your eyes
This was mentioned in the tips above, but you should keep everything you need out of sight, using drawers and furniture. Bookcases can be used to store books, DVDs and CDs, but they shouldn't have many other things, except some simple decorations (not entire collections of items).
Step 8. Tidy up
If you're clearing flat surfaces and the floor and storing things in cabinets and drawers, you'll want to tidy up these areas as well. You can do it in a second stage if you want.
Step 9. Use simple art pieces
To prevent a room from being boring, you can hang simple paintings, drawings or photos, framed using a soft and unique color, on any wall you want. Leave some walls free if possible.
Step 10. Use simple decorative items
As mentioned in the previous steps, one or two simple decorations can be good hints of creativity in a minimal room. A flowerpot or a seedling are two classic examples. If the rest of the room has muted colors, these elements could bring in a vibrant color (like red or yellow) to catch the eye and give a simple room a burst of energy.
Step 11. Prefer simple windows
Those bare, or almost, with plain-colored curtains or wooden shutters, are fine. Adorning the windows too much causes clutter.
Step 12. Adopt simple patterns
Solid color is best for carpets (if you have any), furniture, etc. Complex patterns, such as floral or checkered patterns, can create some visual clutter.
Step 13. Make the most of neutral colors
You can have a splash of bright color in the room, but most of the room should have more muted colors; white is a classic of minimalism, but, actually, any solid color that doesn't stress the eyes will do (earthy colors and nature in general are ideal, such as shades of blue, brown, beige or green).
Step 14. Review and delete
When you simplify a room, you can probably make further changes. Wait for a couple of days after the first change and then cover everything with a fresh look. What can be eliminated? Preserved so that it is not in the way? What is not essential? You can return to each room after a few months to reassess it - sometimes you will find that you can remove even more things.
Step 15. Try to have a place for everything
In a minimalist home, it is important to find a space for everything. Where should the blender be placed? Aim for points that are logical and close to the area where you will use everything, so you will organize the space in a more efficient way, but the key is to designate a point and respect it.
Step 16. Sit back, relax and enjoy the fruit of your labor
Once you've simplified a room, take a moment to look around and reap the benefits. It is so peaceful and satisfying. This will be the reward for your hard work.
Advice
- Minimal furniture. A minimalist room should only contain a few essential pieces. A living room, for example, might have only a large sofa and an armchair or sofa for two, a coffee table, a minimalist home entertainment cabinet (not a huge one with lots of shelves), a television, and a couple of lamps. It could even hold fewer things (sofa, armchairs and a coffee table for example). A bedroom might have a simple bed (or even just a mattress), a wardrobe, and perhaps a nightstand or bookcase.
- Prefer quality over quantity. Since you are minimalist (or at least you are becoming), instead of having a lot of things in your home, you should choose only a few really good pieces that you love and use often. A nice table, for example, is better than five pressed cardboard pieces of furniture.
- Examples. The images in this article are a good example of a minimalist home. Traditional Japanese style homes (think wabi sabi for example) are another good cue for a minimal space.
- Accentuate the decorations. A house that is completely devoid of things might seem a little boring at times indeed. So, instead of having a coffee table completely free of objects, you could put a vase with some flowers for example. Or, on an empty desk, you could place a family photo. An otherwise bare wall could boast a tastefully chosen painting. Modern minimalist home furnishings shouldn't be too simple and bare, but represent an attempt by the owner to generate beauty in their spaces with more discreet ornaments, without exaggerating.
- A minimalist home is less stressful. Clutter is a form of visual distraction and everything that strikes our gaze requires at least part of our attention. The less confusion there is, the less visual stress we have. A minimal home is not only more calming, it is also more charming. Think of images of untidy houses (for example those shown in programs like "Buried in the House") and those of minimalist houses. Those that have few things, except beautiful furniture, a few quality paintings and a couple of nice decorations, attract us the most, even if only subconsciously.
- A minimalist home is easier to clean. It is difficult to clean lots of objects or sweep or vacuum between lots of pieces of furniture. The more things you have, the more you have to keep everything clean, and the more complicated it will be to clean each item. Think about how easy it is to clean an empty room if you compare it to one that has 50 items in it. This of course is an extreme example, because the article doesn't recommend having an empty room, it just serves to illustrate the difference. Minimalist architecture uses the idea of “less is more”; decorations must be based on quality rather than quantity. The structure, in this example the house, is freed of excesses to minimalism, leaving only the necessary walls, large simple windows and a flat ceiling. This can generate a “large room”, a combination of the living room, kitchen and dining room, which will appear spacious. The style can be characterized by the use of natural colors, easily visible outdoors, and by the beauty of natural materials for the finishes, such as real stone tiles, real metal, smooth wooden panels, etc. This style involves the use of modern building materials and manufacturing processes, and this unsurprisingly, modernists might like the look and feel that this kind of home communicates.
- Clean surfaces. In a minimalist home, flat surfaces are free, except for one or two decorations. An infinite amount of trinkets cannot be arranged senselessly and you will never see piles of books, documents or other items.
