Key Elements of Room Design: Scale & Proportion

There is a science behind the proper design of a space; a formula made up of key elements to create an ideal look and aesthetic. Over the next several months, we’re going to dive into each key element of room design to give you a behind the scenes look at everything that goes into creating a room or home. Scale and proportion is one of the first things we consider in an interior design project so, let’s start there.

Scale is the size of everything within a room — the size of the windows, the height of the ceiling, the size of the rug and the furniture, the size of the doorknob. It’s about the location of items within a space to create optimal function. Imagine opening the door to your bedroom and it’s 10 feet tall with a doorknob that is 20” round. That would be difficult to maneuver wouldn’t it? The scale would be too big and, therefore, non-functional. We have all had the experience of being at a bathroom sink that is too short where we are bending over awkwardly to use it. Or walking up a flight of stairs where the incline is too narrow or the step feels too short. These are all issues of - you guessed it - scale.

Interiors are designed for humans who reside within these spaces and are based on human proportions. While we, of course, naturally range in size, there are averages we use and there are norms for certain periods of time.

When the size of a room gets bigger, the items within it it don’t always get bigger. For example, a bed is usually capped at a king size. If a bedroom is significantly bigger than this, usually we keep the bed the same size and then people wonder what to do to fill the space. I’d like to design a house starting with the interior and work my way out. Wouldn’t that be so much better? We’d have less conformity on the outside and more function on the inside. But, the reason we rinse and repeat architectural plans is because the flow works. We want to enter a home in the public spaces and as we navigate in, access the more private areas.

The image below shows scale done right. Alexa Hampton has used the main architectural elements to guide her interior choices. She’s softened the harsh windows with fabric and has repeated the rectangles of the window to the other walls. She’s added height with furniture and a sprinkling of lamps in all corners of the room to illuminate it. 

The kitchen below shows oversized chandeliers, intended to be the star of the show. Could they have used smaller pendants? Yes of course, but these offer a lot of drama and a sense of place.

My general rules on scale include:

• Make the rug as big as you can, but be sure furniture mostly fills it up

• Make your sofas less deep so they have some shape

• Make your ceiling lighting bigger

• Hang your art work lower so that the art relates to the furniture

You have to consider negative space (empty space), which is equally as important to positive space (space that is occupied by objects or material things). We add energy and then we rest in the negative space.

Proportion is more about how these items relate to one another. What size should the pillow on the sofa be? How big should the piece of art be on the wall? How tall should the coffee table be in relation to the seat height of the sofa?

You can think about proportion in terms of color, lighting, soft and hard objects, materiality or finish and decorative items arranged in a specific way.