6/28/2024
Embracing Simplicity: One of the fundamental principles of open and functional spaces is simplicity. By minimizing clutter and unnecessary furniture, you can create a clean and streamlined environment that promotes relaxation and ease of movement. Opt for multifunctional pieces that serve multiple purposes, allowing you to maximize space without sacrificing functionality.

Maximizing Natural Light: Natural light plays a crucial role in enhancing the openness and spaciousness of a room. Embrace large windows, skylights, and strategically placed mirrors to amplify the influx of natural light and create an airy ambiance. Light, neutral color palettes further contribute to the sense of brightness and openness within the space.

Strategic Furniture Placement: When furnishing open spaces, thoughtful furniture placement is key. Arrange furniture in a way that encourages natural traffic flow and conversation, avoiding blocking pathways or disrupting the visual continuity of the room. Opt for furniture with clean lines and low profiles to maintain a sense of openness and cohesion.

Decluttering and Organization: Clutter is the enemy of open spaces. Embrace storage solutions such as built-in cabinets, shelving units, and hidden storage compartments to keep belongings neatly tucked away and out of sight. Regular decluttering sessions can help maintain the streamlined aesthetic of the space and prevent it from feeling overwhelmed by unnecessary items.

Creating Zones: While open spaces promote a sense of interconnectedness, it's essential to delineate distinct zones within the room for different activities. Whether it's a cozy reading nook, a functional workspace, or an entertainment area, creating defined zones helps to establish purpose and functionality within the space while maintaining its overall openness.

By prioritizing simplicity, maximizing natural light, strategic furniture placement, decluttering, and creating defined zones, you can cultivate open and functional spaces that not only exude a sense of spaciousness but also enhance the functionality and livability of your home. Embrace the beauty of open design and enjoy the freedom it brings to your living environment.
Interior Designer since 1985
CEO & Founder, Italian Design in the World
Interior design has long favoured sight: colours, shapes, surfaces. Only recently have we started to talk about touch and smell. Hearing, by contrast, remains the most neglected sense at the design stage — yet it's the one we can't switch off. We live in homes that boom, reverberate, carry voices and noise from one room to another. The result is stress, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and resting.
For decades interior design has chased the idea of a "perfect", unchanging space: same colours, same lights, same layout twelve months a year. The home as a photo set always ready, but often distant from the cycles that govern our body and our mood.Today a different idea is returning: the house as an organism that responds to the seasons. Not an aesthetic whim, but a response to the need to align the environments we live in with natural rhythms — light, temperature, colour, vegetation — with measurable benefits for sleep, concentration and wellbeing.March, with the equinox and the awakening of spring, is the ideal time to rethink interiors in a seasonal key.
For years, interior design has lived with a contradiction: an obsession with effect. Marble-effect. Wood-effect. Metal-effect. Stone-effect. A home that looks like something, rather than truly being something.
For years, we designed homes as if they had to pass a constant visual exam: perfect light, perfect white, the right chair, the right vase. Interiors built to be photographed more than lived in. Digital aesthetics — polished, minimal, hyper-ordered — entered interior design like an unspoken rule: if it isn’t “clean,” it isn’t beautiful; if it isn’t coherent, it isn’t successful; if it can’t be shown, it isn’t desirable.In 2026, this narrative is losing its power. Not because beauty matters less, but because beauty alone is no longer enough. A new need is emerging: anti-algorithm interiors, spaces not designed for the shot, but for everyday life. Less performative homes, more real ones. Environments that don’t seek approval — they restore energy.This is not a return to chaos. It’s a return to meaning.
For years, open-plan living symbolized contemporary domestic design: fluid, bright, without barriers. A response to the desire for freedom, openness, and visual continuity.Today, that promise is being reconsidered. In 2026, many projects mark a shift — not a rejection of open space, but its critical evolution. The return of thresholds.
One of the most underestimated challenges in contemporary design is time. Not the time required to design a space, but the time the space must endure: years of daily life, change, wear, and transformation.