Being able to design your own home, whether it’s a house or a flat, can feel both exciting and overwhelming.
While it can be easy to go crazy buying furniture and home decor to make everything feel more homely, you might soon realise they don’t go as well together as you planned.
You may also find everything has fallen flat as you’re struggling to find your own personal style of decor. So to help, interor designer Aoife Maria from Style So Simple has shared her go to tips.
She outlined mistakes that can make your property look cheap in a video posted to her 62,700 TikTok followers. And thankfully, there’s a simple way to fix it and it’ll only take you seconds to do.
“Design mistakes you might be doing that are making your home look cheap,” she said at the start of her video.
She went on to explain: “When art is hung wrong, it’s actually one of my biggest designer pet peeves, really because it’s so simple to get it right. It’s one of those design details when done right, you probably never even noticed it.
“But when done wrong, it can have a huge negative impact on your space, making it feel disjointed and honestly uncomfortable.”
However, it’s easy to tell whether or not you’ve fallen victim to this mistake. And even better, there’s a simple fix.
“So let’s look at the simple process to always get it right,” Aoife said. “You wanna make sure that your art is not hung too high on the wall or too far from any furniture it’s placed above.
“Hang your art between 10 and 20 centimetres above any furniture.”
Aoife then went on to show how much difference it makes when you get the height right.
She showed a photo of a piece of art hanging far too high above a sofa – versus how it looked when the painting was moved down a few cenimetres.
“So don’t do this, and do this,” she said showing the difference the height made when an art was placed over a sofa.
If you’re wanting to hang two or more pieces or art, she went on to urge people to messure the space between the paintings.
Aoife explained: “And when hanging two pieces or more, make sure they’re not too far apart. So try to hang them between seven centimetres to 20 centimetres apart.”
As for hanging art in a hallway, she advised: “When you’re hanging art in a hallway or basically not above furniture, you wanna make sure that the art is not too high above the floor. So hang it about 60 inches or 145 centimeters from the floor… Another good tip is just make sure it’s eye level.”
It’s clear many found the video useful – as it garnered more than 8,000 likes and plenty of positive comments.
One said: “Thanks for helping.” Another wrote: “I love your tips, thank you.” And a third added: “Very helpful.”
However, others don’t plan on taking the tip on board. One stubborn commenter said: “I’ll hang it the way I like it. Don’t really care what other people think.”
Whatever floats your boat, we suppose!