10 Things You Can Do to Make a House Look Less Cluttered

If you’ve done some decluttering but still feel like your home looks and feels messy and cluttered, here are 10 things you can do to make a house look less cluttered and feel more inviting. 

If you have ever visited a model home, you likely were met with a welcoming, spacious, and beautifully decorated space. You may have walked through the door and thought, “Ahh…I want to stay here and live forever.” Home stagers, interior designers, and even real estate agents know exactly how to make you feel this way. 

Over the years I have learned a thing or two about home staging because there is a lot of crossover between that and decluttering.  

Here’s what professionals know about how to make a house look less cluttered and more inviting:

1. When it comes to furniture, less is more, and more is less.

I keep a set of furniture sliders in my organizing bag and have done my share of removing excess furniture out of rooms. Less furniture will make a room feel larger and too much furniture will shrink it significantly. Oversized, bulky furniture will also decrease how spacious a room feels. Too much furniture can also make a room feel suffocating and stop the flow of energy.   

If that side table in the corner of your living room doesn’t serve a purpose, would it feel more open and welcoming without it? Experiment with removing some of the furniture in each room in your home to see if it feels more open and spacious. Home stagers and interior designers know to strategically place just enough furniture in a room to make it functional and inviting. 

2. Add only a limited amount of carefully curated wall décor.

While artwork and photos can personalize a home, the same rule applies to wall décor. If every wall in your home is covered with artwork, this can make a space feel visually noisy. Intentionally leave a few walls empty for balance. It’s also important to take size and placement into consideration. A dozen small framed photos on a wall look busier than one large piece for example.

Use proportionally similar wall décor for small and large wall spaces. Centering appropriately sized wall decor over pieces of furniture like a sofa or a table also gives the artwork a more balanced allure. 

3. Leave kitchen countertops and other flat surfaces mostly empty.

Kitchen counters that have lots of appliances and other gadgets sitting on them do more than take up space, they also make a kitchen look messy. As a rule of thumb, it is best to leave appliances that you use daily on the countertop for easy access and put everything else away. Leaving plenty of empty space on your countertops makes your kitchen look more clutter free and also allows you to reserve this space for food preparation and other important functions.

Other flat surfaces that have too many small decorative items are also visually chaotic. It’s much better to have just a few select pieces of decor on the flat spaces of your furniture. Leaving plenty of empty space is more restful to the eyes. It also makes it easier to see and appreciate the few select items you have chosen to display. If there is too much to look at, it all loses its beauty and just looks like clutter.

4. The empty spaces in your home are important too.

According to the principals of Fung Shui, your home needs to maintain a balance of both empty space and stuff. Having some empty space allows energy into your home and promotes a peaceful, Zen-like environment.  

Leaving some open spaces in each room will make your home feel and look more calm and clutter free. Doing this helps your mind feel more calm as well because the two are interconnected.

5. Too much open shelving is visually chaotic.

Bookcases and other open shelving can be useful tools for organizing things, but having too much of it can make a room look disheveled and busy. If you have a lot of this type of storage, add some matching decorative baskets to the shelves to store things in so that you create some closed storage. You may also want to invest in some closed storage like cabinets with doors so that not so many of your belongings have to be visible. 

6. An entryway is the first thing guests see when they walk in the door.

In an effort to create easy-access storage, many homes have too much stuff stored right next to the front door. Since this is such an open and public space and the first area that guests see when they enter your home, having too many things stored there will give your home a cluttered feel. See if you can find either closed storage for this area or limit how much you store here.

7. A uniform color scheme will bring more harmony to a room.

Just as symmetry is important, having a uniform color scheme that complements your home will add ambiance and interest. Do you have too many colors going on in a given space or colors that clash with one another? This will make a room feel more busy and cluttered. In a subtle way, this will also add more stress to the eyes.

Also, if you have several storage bins near one another, they will bring more harmony to the room if they match. Lots of containers that don’t match might hide some of your clutter, but will not help your room feel more peaceful.  

8. Too many plants and mixed-matched rugs can also make a room feel too busy.

Busy patterned rugs tend to make a room look more cluttered than solid ones do and even solid colored ones can start to look like clutter if you have to many of them sitting around.

And while I am all for bringing nature into the home to increase the flow of energy and overall Zenlike feel, try not to go overboard on house plants. While they can bring beauty and good quality air to your home, collecting too many of them they can start to look like clutter. Also, I know it’s hard to kill our plant babies, but if they have grown gangly and awkward, they are no longer contributing to the beauty of your home.

9. Professionals know to take symmetry into consideration.

Whether we are talking about wall décor, books, or decorative containers it is important to consider whether or not these items are placed in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Items that are symmetrical will look more appealing to the eye.

For example, having two similar containers sitting on one side of a bookcase and only one on the other does not look as uniform as if you have two that match in size or color on each side of the bookcase. You can use symmetry to add more uniformity and balance to any room.

10. It’s important to leave some empty space on bookshelves and not fill them to the brim with too many books and other small decorative items.

If you happen to be a book lover, you may be tempted to fill your bookshelves heaping full of as many books as you can squeeze in there. However, since bookshelves are open and often placed in highly visible locations, make them look attractive and less cluttered by intentionally leaving some empty space on at least a few of your bookshelves. 

Balancing empty space with objects will create more harmony and add to the beauty of the room overall. Placing books in a symmetrical pattern will also add to your bookcase’s visual appeal.

Hopefully, by adopting some of these tips often used by professionals, you can achieve the same clutter-free look in your own home and enjoy living in a more inviting and Zen-like environment.

Feeling Stuck?

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