4 TACKY Interior Design Mistakes YOU KEEP MAKING in Your Living Room!

[Music] hello everyone my name is kiva and i teach people how to achieve the luxe look for less in today's video we're talking about some interior design mistakes that make your home look tacky these are really teeny tiny mistakes but if you're making them they're having a huge negative impact on your home but don't worry i'm going to give you all the tools to fix them before we get into this video though please don't forget to subscribe like this video and check me out on instagram but let's get into it so like i said today's video is about things in your living room specifically that look tacky now tacky is never a good thing there's no way to spin the word tacky to mean something positive if you're doing these things that they're a little bit dated they're a little bit ugly but don't worry we have some quick fixes and always remember that no matter what i say in today's video or tomorrow's video your home should look exactly the way you want it to so the first thing that makes your living room look tacky is that you went overboard with your color palette so i want to applaud you i want to applaud you for choosing a color palette that's that's hard right people really struggle with this people get so overwhelmed with choosing a color palette they just don't right everything's rainbow or everything's all one color and sometimes it's a choice but other times it's just by default it's just easiest it's overwhelming so choosing a color palette is really hard so if you've done that that's great but something people do all the time is they take it too far we've all been in those homes we've all been in those homes and someone has a red sofa with a red rug with red accent pillows with red drapes with red tea or something like that everything is red everything's blue everything's yellow they chose a color and it's like the color threw up in their house it's like literally like a care bear party they took the color and they threw it up on the walls and i i understand wanting to stick your color palette i admire you for trying to do that but sometimes it just goes a little bit too far now i'm not saying don't incorporate color color is great you don't have to live like me you know i know that's not for everyone color is great but you gotta mix up the shade of the color the amount of the color how you present that color so maybe if you like the color blue right you might have some blue in your rug but your rug is predominantly white or it might have some green or some beige in it as well it's not all blocks of one color right people mix it up in terms of pattern and texture and that's really important because if everything is the same it loses its value it's not visually interesting it's flat and honestly i'm just kind of like why is this room themed do you know what i mean but you can have a blue room and really like it and have maybe blue in one of your patterns blue and some texture or different shades of view different hues of blue different amounts of blue and the different things you can have a color and really drive that color home and not go overboard with it right because it turns your home from being a themed home to being a home that's really well curated and you just have an emphasis on a particular color we talk about this all the time we talk about repetition cohesion flow we want all of those things but that doesn't mean that we're going to copy and paste what we do in one room on one surface in all the other rooms and on all the other surfaces so i see this in living rooms all the time we're working to make them look cohesive and curated and sophisticated but sometimes they just end up looking too patchy patch is the best adjective i can come up it looks like maybe you went in the catalog and they're trying to sell you on this new pattern of the year right so of course in the catalog they have the sofa in the pattern the rug in the pattern the pillow on the pattern the this on the pattern right and they're trying to get you to buy the things but probably separately not all together but you're like well they did it here i'm gonna do it at home and then there's just like a disconnect and it just looks too busy and everything loses its value again if everything looks the same i don't know where to look and therefore i'm not really looking anywhere the next reason why your living room looks tacky is because you are afraid of dead space if you don't know what dead space means it basically is empty space it's a wall that is empty right and people are terrified of dead space i don't know maybe it's because like it's called dead space so like the dead like really just like rubs you off but empty space it's the same thing people are terrified of dead space but you need it every space needs dead space and i'm going to tell you why so what you see all the time people will have a picture on this wall and that wall and this wall and that wall and i'm like okay it's just again it's visually a lot right and people are afraid of bare walls they're like if my wall's bare people think i didn't design my home but dead space is such a valuable thing because it helps break up your wall and help segment your artwork and your decor so this is especially useful in open concept so let's talk about my living room for example there's not really any art up now so actually this is a great room to work with so when i have this big mirror behind me it's a glorious mirror i used to have art on the other side i think that that looked nice too you can have art on the other side or you can leave a bear it depends on where you want people's attention to go to right because if you have a bunch of things on one wall and there's no dead space everything is competing with one another same thing goes for just like the walls in my home right i have this wall over here i have the wall the mirrors on i have walls over here i have wall space in between my windows if i put something on every single piece of wall available it is too busy it is just overwhelming right the things that look tacky you're finding in this video are just overwhelming to the eye and again we're spending so much time so much money curating these spaces we actually want people to stop and look at them when there isn't dead space there's too much clutter especially on the walls not only is it just like hard to look at but it makes a space feel small right and a small space is never ideal we want to make our homes look as large and as grand as physically possible and i even talked about this just last week in my 2022 trends video and it was about the gallery wall replacing gallery walls with just large pieces of art because again so much clutter so much competition you don't really know where to look just imagine that people have gallery walls on every wall space available just there's nothing to look at right then i feel like everything down below all the furniture all the styling has to be so simple to compensate for the fact that there's so much going on at the walls that if you put something down below the house just looks messy i see people especially make this tacky mistake in places where you have light switches so wherever you have your light switch a thermostat a security system people like i feel like i need to put something on this wall no the only thing on that wall is the security system or the light switch you may be trying to draw attention from that but at the end of the day everyone knows it's there honestly you don't really want to draw attention away from that you want people to know where the lights are you want people to know how to arm the house you want to know where your keys are and all those things tend to be congruent in the same space so if you're dealing with a sliver of wall which is kind of what i'm talking about i'm not talking about a big massive wall but a sliver of wall it's okay for it to be empty this also happens a lot of the time in an entryway you'll have a door and then maybe you'll have four or five inches of space on either side and people feel inclined to throw a lamp in there cl throw a um you know a plant a something a big vase you're just trying to fill up the space and the space doesn't need to be full especially spaces that people don't look at regularly right so if you're walking into a home and you have space on either side of the doors you really need to think about what you see as you come in the home right so whatever is going on in the foyer whatever is going on to the side of the door doesn't really matter who's looking like that until it's time to leave and again how someone feels on the departure of one's home is not as significant as how one feels upon the entrance of a home so whatever's going on on either side it's really unnecessary and then when you do see it it's really cluttered right because you're taking away from a door doors are expensive doors tend to be ornate they're doing enough in themselves right you want to put your money your time your effort styling into the things that people actually see once they're properly in the home some walls can be empty and honestly this is going to save you a lot of money because i feel like people try and find little pieces little trashies to throw up on the wall and fill these spaces it just looks cluttered the scale is almost always off and just skip it all together it looks tacky and you're gonna save a bunch of money once you remedy it now this one this is the one that really gets me the most this is the one where i thought about it and i was like i gotta make this video on things looking tacky and again i want to say every single thing that i'm talking about in this video are things that i've done myself i am always right there with you because interior design is a journey for everyone so don't feel bad even the professionals are where you are at some point in life but the next thing that really looks tacky that really grinds my gears is bookshelf styling so there are two ends of the spectrum and i literally despise them both okay so at one end we have the very empty styling and then on the other hand you have a very very cluttered styling so let's talk about both and i'm going to tell you about why both of them look tacky so we're going to talk about the empty styling now this happens a lot with the contemporary design lovers the modern design lovers again i've fallen subject to this one definitely this one we will get these shelves we'll spend a lot of money on these shelves or making these shelves we make these shelves and then we don't put anything on them and i'm like isn't the whole point of the shelf to hold something but there's nothing on them there's like one bowl and i'm like are you still working on it are you waiting for something to come in the mail but they're just empty and i'm just kind of like if you're going to get shelves and make them empty shelves in themselves don't look that good unless they're really really expensive shelves you've carved them um they have a story written on them i don't know i don't literally don't know what you could do to make a shelf really that interesting the point of a shelf is to be a vehicle for other things specifically books but it's supposed to be a vehicle for other things so if you're not putting other things on that shelf the shelf isn't really serving a purpose if you're gonna get a shelf and you're not gonna style it just don't get the shelf there's so many other things you could put up against a wall and let me tell you shelves take away a lot of floor space right because they're always deep they're always at least 12 inches deep that's a foot right and sometimes they're 16 inches 18 inches they're very deep they take up a lot of floor space so if you have no utility for one don't even add it instead add a mirror mount that on the wall add artwork put that on the wall those things are a lot more exciting and they just make more sense plus they give you so much more space to actually maneuver your home this is especially true when you're dealing with bookshelves they're kind of floating in space so if a bookshelf is up against a wall kind of like this it doesn't matter as much right because there's nothing behind that you're not seeing the the side view of those shelves but if you're walking along the room and a bookshelf is sticking out from the wall and you can see it because you might be to the right or the left of that shelf i'll put up a visual so that makes more sense it's really wasting space and you're really heavily made aware of it so if that styling isn't like the bomb.com there's no reason to have that shelf just at art add something that's a little bit less deep that is going to make a lot more sense for your space and also if you don't like too much clutter right that's why you've kept yourselves minimal instead of having an open shelf just get a close shelf you still have the clothes shelf it still adds something you can have something with cool handles again it can be visually interesting they shell closed shelves that are visually interesting um and just keep it closed have the few things in there that you want to have it actually will have storage space and you can just do a little bit of styling on top and that can be your minimal touch but let's talk about the over styled shelves so like what is the point right if you have that many things we need to figure out a better stored system now if your maximalist doesn't apply to you of course so don't write it down in the comments it does not apply to you that's okay but if you can't figure out how to style yourself or you have too many things stop shopping you're doing too much shopping less is more but not less less is more right not what i was talking about before but less is more you want to be strategic with your shelf styling for example if on the top shelf you have something in the middle you don't want to also put something on the middle of the other one and then on the left and right as well that's too much right i don't know what to look at they're competing with one another so if i have something on the middle of a top shelf then on the next shelf maybe i'll have something on the left side or on the right side or both but not something in the middle as well you want to stagger your decor so that it's not overwhelming but a lot of the times i see a ton of decor on every single shell and i'm just kind of like is this a storage system or is this like a vignette right if it's a vignette let's eliminate it we're doing too much less is more let's choose the things we actually want to put on display and put them there i think the reason that a lot of people fall into this tacky mistake is that they don't scale things appropriately for the shelves and you feel like you have to throw a lot on there for the shelf to look full measure the shelves in terms of width length and depth before you go shopping so you get something that's appropriately sized so that you don't overfill those surfaces this overcrowding also happens when you're trying to put decor and books on a bookshelf so a bookshelf is called a bookshelf so i want you to prioritize your books i know i feel like no one says that in the design community but bookshelves are for books if you have books please don't tuck your books away to put out your fake books don't tuck your good useful books away to put out your coffee table books your useful books come first so maybe your bookshelves aren't for other people maybe they actually just have a practical purpose put your bookshelves on this like put your books on your bookshelves and configure everything around that if all your books have a place you can access them easily you can find what you need to find when you need to find it then you can add some decor if there's empty space but if not your bookshelf is just for books then and that's totally okay right we live in our homes we read our books we want to access our books yes my wife's medical books are not the most attractive but i'd rather have her have her have access to the information she needs to like help someone then me look at my tom ford book right i feel like that makes a lot of sense and if after i said that you're like well kiva like that doesn't really look good like my books not look good i'm with you then don't make the bookshelves the focal point of the room so i'm working with a client right now and she had these beautiful built-in bookcases in her office but she reads all the time she uses them for work so we were going to style them but the styling didn't work because she wanted to use the books so instead of putting her desk right in front of that bookshelf where you can see all the books all like the gaps the imperfections just her stuff that she uses all the time we're gonna rotate the desk so that the bookcase is not the backdrop of her zoom calls the bookcase is not what you're primarily looking at now now you're looking at her executive desk and the art behind it just reconfigure room so that your bookshelves aren't front and center so they can be practical and not make the room look messy the next designer mistake you're making that looks super tacky is that you're over cluttering your surfaces so we just touched on this a little bit when it came to the shelves but this applies to all surfaces your kitchen countertops your kitchen cabinets your console tables your coffee tables your sideboards we don't need to style every inch of everything right if we're spending all this money on these console tables that are actually made of wood and not veneer they have all these details why are we covering them up i feel like we're always covering something up but there is actual beauty in some of the furniture that we buy especially when it's a little bit more expensive now if you're getting just like really basic furniture obviously does not apply to you but this is something that i do want to say again when we're styling surfaces we want to think about the rule of threes we're going to group things in threes and kind of call it a day same thing as we talked about with the shelf styling we don't want something on both ends of the sideboard and also in the middle of the sideboard right we do not want that we want something on one side maybe both sides but not in the middle or just in the middle we want things to be simple we want things to be digestible we want things to be palatable i'm just finding synonyms at this point but you know what i'm trying to say simple is good but this the things you use to style don't have to be simple but the styling itself should be simple so maybe you'll have something that is made out of a hammered metal maybe you'll have an organic piece of wood maybe you'll have something that's ceramic you can have three different textures three different heights three different colors but only three things so it's very simple in the number of things that you're doing but there is so much to unpack there that it packs a punch even though it's only three things on one table it's something that i really want to take with you again if we're getting a scale wrong we feel inclined to add more things than we need to so we want to pay attention to scale i have on scale on every video i'm not going to bore you on it today but we need to be mindful of scale this particularly is bothersome when it comes to coffee tables because we over clutter our coffee table so much that we cannot actually use them you know you come sit down you're having people over and you're like oh sorry there's nowhere to put your cup even though your coffee table is 48 inches wide why is there nowhere to put my cup why is it covered in stuff let me use my stuff i really think the the source of this problem is also like instagram right because myself included i'll post these things where i've styled something but also five minutes later when i need to use it i'm going to pick it up and put it somewhere practical yes ma'am because i want to use my surfaces so our online styling is not the same thing we do day to day i know i've let the cat out of the bag i don't care it's my job to tell you guys the truth so we want to do styling that makes sense that allows us to continue using our surfaces because we paid for our surfaces and we live with our surfaces i a lot of people eat in front of the tv right so you want to be able to put your food down on the coffee table you don't want to have to say oh excuse me candle could you move out of the way no that doesn't make any sense so less is more when it comes to styling so style the things heavily that you never touch so if you're one of those people who has a bookcase and you're not going to put any books on it style the heck out of it style the heck out of it make it look great again still follow the rules but style the heck out of it so that everywhere else you can have a little bit more minimal styling okay guys that's it for today's video those are four interior design mistakes that are making your home look tacky i know i hate to call you tacky but that's exactly what it is and if you fix these things and they're super easy to fix your house is going to look so much more sophisticated if you like today's video please don't forget to subscribe like this video and check me out on instagram and until next time have a beautiful day [Music]

Channel: DIY with KB

Views: 138,059

Rating: 4.9012184 out of 5

Keywords: tacky home, tacky living room, interior design mistakes, tacky interior design mistakes, ugly interior design mistaeks, ugly living room, ugly home, home decor mistakes, home mistakes, interior design hacks, interior design mistakes and how to fix them, diy with kb, kiva brent, arvin olano, nick lewis, Your Living Room Looks TACKY, we need to talk, interior design missteps, living room mistakes

Id: zOjyPH0Aw4w

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021