Many times you can make the best improvements to a space by removing things from it. For example, removing weeds from a garden will improve its looks by more than adding any flower. Also, minimalists as a group have better-looking home decors than hoarders do. But the question is why? So, I will discuss the reasons why removing things will make a room look better:
Too many things to look at
Having too many things to look at can detract from the beauty of a room. A decorative item cannot be an accent piece if it is lost among many things. It would be like a needle in a haystack. Now, this can relate to information overload (although more research is necessary). Information overload happens when there is more information than the brain can handle. For example, studies show that over-decorated classrooms decrease learning performance.
The average human mind can only keep track of about 4 things at once. Information that the brain cannot process becomes useless. Useless information is one of the definitions of noise. Now, when many people think of noise, they only think of the type caused by sound. But noise can be from any type of information including visual noise. Regardless, you can use sound to make a great analogy such as the following:
It’s fun to listen to your favorite music. But it would be less fun with 5 other types of music playing loudly in the background.
This analogy works well with visual noise. It is harder to focus on the beauty of something when there are too many things in the room to distract you from it.
Removing things from the room will reduce the visual noise. There will also be less chance of colors clashing with each other. The room will seem more spacious because removing things means adding space back to the room. Also, your beautiful accent pieces will stand out. There won’t be any visual noise to drown them out.
Clutter is a problem.
So far, the discussion about too many things assumes that the room is tidy. If you add clutter, it takes the problem to another level. Clutter is the arrangement of things in a disorderly manner. This means that things are not in their proper places. Clutter is the biggest problem to afflict the decors of modern homes. In fact, many people live in cluttered homes.
Many objects in a tidy room can cause visual noise. But this is no match to the visual noise caused by clutter. Colors can clash in a neat room. But they don’t clash as clutter does. Clutter takes visual noise to a crescendo, and it clashes with everything in the worst way. Clutter even clashes with itself. In fact, if you see the catalogs of home decor companies, you will notice one common feature. That is the absence of clutter in their depicted showrooms. It’s because clutter will detract from the decor in any room.
Having many things is one of the biggest contributors to clutter. It’s because having a lot of things makes it harder to keep everything in its proper place. Every room has a finite amount of space. The more things you put in that space, the less space you will have available. Also, keep in mind that some of that space is necessary for people to move around and use the room. A room that is full of things will take more time and effort to keep clean and tidy. When a chore takes a lot of time, people will do it less often, if at all. This is one way that adding things to a room can make it look worse.
Having too many things makes it impossible to avoid clutter.
Having a lot of things in a room is bad enough. But it pales in comparison to having too many things. Having too many things means that there is not enough space to have a place for everything. If this happens, clutter will pile up on all horizontal surfaces. It will become impossible to keep the room tidy. Also, anything else you add to the room will only make the problem worse. To make a room like this look better, you must remove things from it.
Removing things from an over-crowded room will improve it
If you remove enough things from an overcrowded room, it will look and function much better. It will seem more spacious because it is more spacious. That’s because when you remove anything from a room, you add its volume back to the space in the room. Here is an example to illustrate this:
If you remove a 2ft x 2ft x 2ft box from a room, you added 8 cubic feet back to the space of the room.
So if you remove enough things from a room, you will have ample space for everything. It will much easier to keep tidy too. The type of organizing that used to take hours will take only a few minutes. This will make you likely to organize the room more often. And organizing it more often will make the task even quicker and easier. The room will go from being a chaotic mess to a tranquil haven. This is another reason why removing things from a room can make it look better.
In summary, having a lot of things in a room creates a lot of visual noise. It is because the average person can keep track of a limited number of things at once. This visual noise will detract from the beautiful things in the room. In this case, removing things from the room will make it look better even if it was tidy.
But many people live in cluttered homes. Clutter takes visual noise to a much higher level and will detract from a room’s decor in the worst way. Having a lot of things in a room is one of the main contributors to clutter. In fact, having too many things will make it impossible to keep the room tidy. Removing many of the things will add space back to the room and make it easier to keep tidy. The room will transform from being a chaotic mess to a tranquil haven. This is another reason why removing things can make a room look better.