Love Patterns? Try This Design Trick to Pull Any Room Together
Decorating experts achieve cohesion by repeating a pattern—say, on the wallpaper and then on a chair cushion. But how much repetition is too much or not enough? Interior designers share their secrets.
2 min
THE HUMAN BRAIN loves a good pattern. Evolutionarily speaking, we’re hard-wired to recognize repetitive shapes. They organize the world around us. From a design standpoint, patterns can also help our homes feel harmonic. Applying the same one to multiple elements in a room pulls your décor together. We asked design pros for some tips on nailing the technique.
The Appeal
The right motif in the right places brings order and structure to an interior scheme, said Barrie Benson. In the library of one Charlotte, N.C., home, the local designer used a tartan print in small doses as roman shades and the upholstery of a settee. “There was a lot going on—textures and patterns, books, oriental rugs. The plaid worked because it added straight lines and a kind of framework,” she said.
A bolder repetition of pattern across multiple surfaces can engender a sense of snugness. Elizabeth Hay, a designer who splits her time between Singapore and the U.K., clad the walls and a big sofa in a TV room in the same motif. “It creates an enveloping, cozy feel,” she said.
The Tips
Such pattern echoes work best when deployed in understated ways—on just seat covers and window shades, say—or taken intentionally over-the-top, explained Benson. “One more place would have been too much—unless I did the entire room in plaid,” she said of her limited use of tartan in the library. “You do it completely, or you pick two places.” Treatments that occupy the middle ground tend to look cloyingly matchy-matchy.
But beware: Heavy-handed repetition can skew old-fashioned if the pattern is too fussy or traditional, says Hay. “You used to see rooms with chintz on everything—the walls, the curtains, the bed, the bed skirt—with lots of ruffles and gathers,” she said. “That can feel a bit claustrophobic.”
“What works very well is what we call in French ‘décalé,’” said Paris designer Laura Gonzalez by way of pattern guidance. The translation: offbeat, like the unusual boho geometric she chose for the wall and sofa shown in the photo below.
The Caveats
Patterns are often available as both wallpaper and fabric, but the two renderings are likely printed at different mills, warned Benson. “Make sure you’re getting samples, because often the colors are a little off. They should be very, very close.”
Just as the brain is built for pattern recognition, it instantly detects disruptions. Take care with seaming and matching. The smallest offset can spoil allover patterning. “When you match the lines perfectly, it can look like a sofa is growing from the wall,” Gonzalez said. “There is an infinity illusion,” which can make even a tiny room seem much bigger.
While liberal use of bold patterns calls for courage, Hay cautions against the wishy-washy accent wall. “Your room will feel much busier with just one patterned wall, because it’s not balanced,” she said. If you paper the whole room and carry the pattern to the headboard or the curtains, “it’ll actually be softer on the eye.”
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Jack Freeman believes the most compelling interiors are not decorated, but collected. The FREEMAN & CO founder creates layered, personal spaces shaped by art, travel and craftsmanship.
4 min
For Jack Freeman, a compelling interior should not look as though it was completed in a single shopping trip.
The founder and designer behind FREEMAN & CO prefers rooms that develop through art, travel, commissioned furniture and objects collected over time. It is an approach that treats the home less as a decorative project and more as an evolving portrait of its owner.
“I am a true believer in collecting versus decorating,” Freeman says.
That distinction underpins the international practice he has built across private residences, hotels, property developments, yachts and private aviation. Its projects stretch from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay and Toorak to Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean.
Although the locations and architecture vary considerably, the work is connected by a restrained design language. Natural stone, warm timbers and sculptural furniture establish the foundation, while art, bespoke lighting and individual objects give each interior its identity.
The objective is not to overwhelm a room with obvious symbols of expense. It is to create an environment that feels calm, layered and particular to the people living within it.
“The greatest luxury isn’t about excess,” Freeman says. “It’s about creating an oasis where you come home and feel immediately grounded — effortlessly chic and deeply personal.”
Collecting instead of decorating
Decorating can imply the completion of a room: selecting the required furniture, filling the available walls and producing a coherent finished image.
Collecting is less conclusive.
A collected interior has room to change as its owners travel, discover artists, inherit pieces or reassess how they use their home. Its character comes from the relationship between objects rather than adherence to a single brand or season.
That does not mean placing unrelated pieces together without discipline. The designer must understand scale, proportion, material and provenance well enough to create a dialogue between them.
A contemporary artwork might sit beside a historic piece of furniture. A precisely detailed new interior may be interrupted by an irregular object made by hand. Smooth stone can be balanced by timber, textiles or a patinated metal surface that becomes richer with age.
The tension between those elements is part of the appeal.
For Freeman, art is not an accessory to be added once the furniture plan is complete. It forms part of the architecture and atmosphere of the room from the beginning.
Lighting is considered in the same way. Beyond its practical purpose, a bespoke fitting can operate as a suspended sculpture, changing both the room’s composition and the way its materials are experienced after dark.
A design perspective shaped by travel
International travel plays a significant role in Freeman’s creative process.
Design fairs such as PAD Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan provide opportunities to encounter emerging designers, established galleries, new materials and collectible furniture away from the filter of social media.
More spontaneous discoveries can prove equally important.
“Sometimes it’s the simple things,” Freeman says. “That piece found on a shopping trip with a client in Paris, stumbling across an artisan’s workshop, or a special memory that forms the narrative of the story.”
Objects selected during travel bring more than visual interest into a home. They carry an association with a place, maker or experience, giving the client a connection that cannot be reproduced by ordering an entire interior from a catalogue.
Freeman’s influences are international, but his projects are not conceived as replicas of Parisian, Milanese or Californian style. Each commission responds to its architecture, setting, natural light and the daily lives of its occupants.
A waterfront Sydney residence demands a different treatment from a Mayfair townhouse. A Caribbean estate shaped by brutalist architecture and reflecting pools calls for another response again.
The designer’s role is to absorb those references without allowing them to overwhelm the individual qualities of the property.
Designing the complete experience
FREEMAN & CO extends beyond conventional interior decoration.
The practice’s stated services include interior design and architecture, project management, property acquisition, development advice, concept design, documentation, furniture and lighting design, procurement and art curation.
That breadth allows the team to become involved before a room’s dimensions and finishes are fixed.
Early participation can be important at the top end of the residential market, where architecture, landscape, interiors, technology and art must operate as one environment. Decisions about ceiling heights, wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting can directly affect where art is installed or how custom furniture is proportioned.
The practice can then carry those decisions through to procurement and final installation, maintaining the design narrative as a project moves between architects, builders, specialist craftspeople, dealers and suppliers.
Its residential portfolio includes a South Coast retreat conceived as an escape from urban life, a Caribbean estate with reflecting pools, an East Coast-inspired Palm Beach residence and a Mayfair townhouse organised around an expressive drawing room.
The studio also says it has worked on highly tailored Sydney residences with values exceeding $100 million, although the private nature of such commissions means individual addresses and clients are not always disclosed.
A home that can keep changing
The risk in creating a perfectly resolved interior is that it can become too static — a composition that looks exceptional in photographs but leaves little room for life.
Freeman sees the home as something that should evolve with its owners.
“I love the evolution of design,” he says. “We are talking about people’s lives, and as they evolve, so too should their private sanctuaries.”
That evolution might involve adding art, reupholstering a significant piece, adapting rooms as a family changes or making space for objects gathered through future travels.
The original design needs to be strong enough to accommodate those layers.
This may be the clearest expression of Freeman’s approach to luxury. It is not simply access to rare stone, collectible furniture or commissioned craftsmanship. It is the creation of a personal environment whose meaning deepens rather than diminishes with time.
Fact box
- Designer: Jack Freeman
- Role: Founder and managing director
- Practice: FREEMAN & CO
- Base: Australia, with international projects
- Project locations named by the practice: Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay, Toorak, Palm Beach, the NSW South Coast, Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean
- Sectors: Private residences, hotels, residential developments, private aviation and superyachts
- Services: Interior design and architecture, property development, project management, property acquisition, documentation, furniture and lighting design, FF&E procurement, interior dressing and art curation
- Design philosophy: Collected, personal interiors shaped by art, craftsmanship, travel and enduring materials
- Website: free-man.co
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