How to make a maximist home design work

Larger than life and as bold as brass, maximalist home design has taken Australia by storm, with many homeowners incorporating principles from this eclectic interior design style into their homes.

Whilst fans of camp and kitsch have flocked to the design style with minimal fuss, a great majority of DIY designers may find themselves at a loss when it comes to knowing just how to get started with this emerging style.

Read on for an overview of all the elements that go into this eclectic design style, so that you can get to work on melding and maintaining your very own maximalist interiors.

One of the trickiest aspects of maintaining a maximalist space is simply ensuring that your highly cultivated interior never gets mistaken for a big mess. Naturally, keeping your space clutter-free, well-dusted, and potentially even using robot vacuums to ensure that all of its many nooks and crannies are kept well-maintained, can play a huge role in ensuring that your maximalist interiors never feel stale.

A universal principle in interior design is cultivating a sense of balance in all your interiors, whether this be a balance of colour, texture, or other contrasting elements that you're most likely to see in a consciously designed space.

Balance becomes exponentially more difficult to attain if your space is plagued with meaningless visual noise created by clutter and unnecessary decor. And yes, there can be such a thing as 'unnecessary decor' in maximalism.

Despite maximalism being the complete antithesis of minimalism by name, these two styles do actually hold one thing in common: all of the decor used in your space must 'spark joy'.

Whilst minimalists follow the doctrine that 'less is more' and thus, opt for unique or highly personal pieces that are imbued with a deep sense of individual meaning, maximalists can find joy in curating vivid tapestries, using many parts to create a holistic representation of themselves and all that ignites them.

A maximalist home should ideally only be decorated with design elements that say a little bit about that home's occupant or occupants.

For instance, families who love to travel may have hanging wall art or souvenirs and mementos that they've collected across their adventures to make those memories live on through their home's decor and design.

Incorporating design elements that hold meaning for the occupants of that maximalist interior space, will undoubtedly ensure that those elements take on meaning and come with their own stories for all of the guests that you'll be welcoming into the space.

After all, maximalism is really all about embracing the stories that dot the great expanse that we call life.

Returning to the importance of balance or cohesion in every school of interior design, there's a specific practice that can be observed in characteristically 'loud' styles like Bohemian interior design as well as maximalism.

This is the secret yet contrarily subtle art of 'layering'.

Layering is essentially the practice of purposefully clashing or combining colours, textures, and patterns to create interior environments that are dynamic by their very nature, and encourage occupants of that space to really engage with all the minute details both individually and as a whole.

When done with absolute precision, layering can transform any interior from being needlessly noisy to a strikingly harmonious space.

Given that the art of layering demands designers to develop an eye for intricate detail, this design practice comes naturally to very few designers.

The fantastic thing about layering as a skill, however, is that it can be trained. DIY designers can use pre-existing guidelines like the 60-30-10 colour rule or the colour wheel outlining complementary and contrasting colours, to train up their ability to perceive a sense of balance between even the most minuscule details.

This skill can then be used to ensure that the many diverse colours, textures, and patterns that make up all the design elements of your maximalist interiors stay perfectly aligned with one another, even to the untrained eye.

Much like the Bohemian style of interior design, maximalism also tends to be a celebration of the world and all that it has to offer. It's common for maximalist interiors to incorporate colourful prints, vintage photographs of rustic country villages or coastal vistas, and woven rugs or tapestries hailing from all over the world in the one space, the end result being a general hodgepodge of humanity.

You should allow yourself to fill your maximalist space with any and all cultural decor that fills you with nostalgia, a sense of wanderlust, or both!

Doing so will ensure that your interiors stay nice and dreamy and that the tone of your home feels consistently warm, positive, and inclusive.

Alongside boasting a dynamic sense of place, maximalist interiors are also well known for their innate sense of timelessness. It's common to see fairly modern or twentieth-century pieces of furniture amidst more traditional decor like Persian rugs or handwoven wall hangings.

In any maximalist interior, there are bound to be modern elements that remind the space's occupants that they are in a designed environment.

An increasingly common design element that can be found in many modern maximalist interiors is smart lighting.

Installing smart lights allows your maximalist interior to be illuminated with a near-infinite array of colours and hues, ensuring that your interiors are ready for any kind of social occasion.

Having playful lighting may also enhance the eclectic feel of your maximalist interiors in a way that traditional yellow or white lighting may not be able to. It's all about finding the ideal look and feel that makes the space feel like your very own.

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Finally, it's important to note that maximalism is never really a static style, and that part of the process of crafting these interiors is refreshing them, either by adding new elements or orchestrating rearrangements.

This is very much a process of trial, error, and experimentation, so you should absolutely feel encouraged to design and redesign to your heart's content.