Good design advice from the greats
Good design advice can help you to avoid ghastly design mistakes – but how can you tell if it’s really good design advice?
In this blog we are sharing wisdom from some of the world’s top interior designers and architects – good design advice that inspires us every day. Even though many of these quotations were stated years ago – good design is timeless, as is good design advice.
Many designers follow a few basic rules for each project they work on and these are definitely helpful. Colours: stick to just a few (ones that you have always loved) and mix them with neutrals. Proportions: A large room needs large furniture, a medium room, medium-sized furniture and so on. Styles: mix it up, most rooms can deal with a thoughful combination of vintage and new.
There are certainly many ‘rules’ to stick to in order to acheive good interior design – but one of the most important of those rules is: “Rules are made to be broken.”
Good Design Advice – our top 15 quotes:
Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris, Textile Designer & Philosopher
I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.
Dorothy Draper, Interior Product Designer
There is nothing more exciting than incorporating bold, vibrant colors with a striking mix of genres and periods to create lively, magical spaces that inhabit memories and enrich lives.
Jamie Drake, Interior Designer
Learn to look not just with your eyes but with your heart. Find the things that connect with you. How else will you know how to design your home?
Kelly Hoppen, Interior & Product Designer
Nothing is passé if you really love it.
Rose Tarlow, Interior & Furniture Designer, Antiques Dealer
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.
Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur, Inventor & Industrial Designer
Exquisite details make interiors sing.
Larry Laslo, Interior & Product Designer
Luxury must be comfortable otherwise it is not luxury.
Coco Chanel, Fashion Designer
For a house to be successful, the objects in it must communicate with one anther, respond and balance one another.
Andrée Putman, Interior and Product Designer
Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect & Interior Designer
Designers and people in general are too attracted by ‘new’, but nothing ages more quickly than ‘newness’. All my objects reflect [a] marriage between past and present.
Marcel Wanders, Designer & Art Director
Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Artist, Mathematician, Inventor & Writer
Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur, Inventor & Industrial Designer
Pick what you like because living with a trend that is not you is never a good choice.
Thomas Pheasant, Interior & Product Designer
A designer has a duty to create timeless design. To be timeless you have to think really far into the future, not next year, not in two years but in 20 years minimum.
Philippe Starck Creator, Designer & Architect
Visit our Interior Design Gallery for more inspiration!
