I used to think minimalism was about having less stuff, which—honestly—felt kind of depressing.
Then I spent a weekend at a friend’s apartment in Copenhagen, where every surface seemed deliberately empty yet the space felt ridiculously alive, and I realized I’d been confusing simplicity with deprivation. The wooden dining table held exactly one bowl of pears. The walls were bare except for a single piece of abstract art that looked like someone had spilled ink and decided to frame the accident. There were plants, sure, but not an Instagram jungle—just three or four specimens positioned where light actually hit them. The sofa was this enormous linen thing that took up half the living room, unapologetically oversized, and somehow that one extravagant choice made everything else feel intentional rather than sparse. I guess what struck me was how much breathing room existed between objects, like each piece had been given permission to just be itself without competing for attention.
Here’s the thing: elegance through simplicity isn’t about following some Scandinavian rulebook or achieving that sterile hotel lobby aesthetic. It’s more like editing a sentence until only the words that actually matter remain. You start noticing what pulls focus unnecessarily—the decorative bowl you never liked but kept because it was a gift, the seventeen throw pillows that make sitting on the couch a tactical operation, the wall calendar from 2019 that’s somehow still hanging there.
The Paradox of Choosing What Stays and What Disappears
Elimination sounds easy until you’re standing in your living room trying to decide which objects spark joy or whatever we’re calling it now.
I’ve seen people gut entire rooms only to realize they’ve created a cold, unwelcoming void that feels more like a staged listing than a home. The tricky part is that simplicity requires you to be incredibly picky about what remains—each piece needs to either serve a clear function or genuinely move you in some way. That ceramic vase your grandmother made? Keeper. The mass-produced “Live Laugh Love” sign? Probably not. But then you hit these weird gray areas where sentimentality and aesthetics clash, and suddenly you’re having an existential crisis over a chipped mug. What helps, I think, is asking whether an object adds more through its presence than its absence would provide through openness. Sometimes the answer surprises you, and you end up keeping the weird brass lamp you thought you hated because it turns out to be the only thing in the room with any personality.
Why Empty Space Might Be Your Most Expensive Design Element
Anyway, negative space costs nothing and somehow feels like the ultimate luxury.
Walk into any high-end design showroom and you’ll notice how much floor remains visible, how much wall stays blank, how furniture floats in space rather than hugging corners desperately. This isn’t accidental—it’s architectural restraint, which is a fancy way of saying someone had the discipline not to fill every gap. In smaller homes this principle feels almost impossible to follow because every square foot supposedly needs to justify its existence through storage or function, but that’s exactly when breathing room matters most. I remember visiting a studio apartment in Tokyo, maybe 250 square feet total, where the owner had chosen to keep an entire corner completely empty except for one floor cushion and a low bookshelf. That emptiness made the space feel three times larger than it actually was, like the room extended beyond its physical boundaries. The psychological effect of uncluttered space is measurable too—studies suggest that visual complexity increases cognitive load, though I can’t remember if that’s roughly 30% or 40%, give or take. Point is, your brain relaxes when it has fewer objects to process.
The Textures and Materials That Carry Simplicity Without Feeling Clinical
Wait—maybe the real secret is that simple doesn’t mean smooth.
If everything in a minimal space is perfectly white and glossy, you end up with an operating room vibe that makes people afraid to touch anything. The designers I admire most layer textures like crazy while keeping the color palette quiet—rough linen next to smooth leather, matte ceramic beside raw wood, nubby wool throws on sleek concrete floors. These material contrasts create visual interest without requiring pattern or ornamentation. I once helped a friend redecorate after her divorce (she wanted to erase every trace of her ex’s questionable taste in furniture), and we spent an entire afternoon just collecting fabric samples. Turned out that replacing her old floral couch with a textured gray bouclé one, then adding a chunky knit blanket and some linen curtains, transformed the room completely without changing the minimal layout. Natural materials especially tend to age in ways that add character—the patina on brass, the wear patterns on leather, the silvering of untreated wood. These imperfections become part of the story, which I guess is the opposite of that IKEA catalog perfection that feels frozen in time.
Living With Less While Somehow Feeling Like You Have Exactly Enough
Honestly, this is the hardest part to articulate.
There’s this moment that happens maybe a few weeks after you’ve stripped a room down to its essentials, where you stop noticing what’s missing and start noticing what’s present. The morning light hits the floor differently when there’s no clutter to interrupt it. You can actually see the grain in your wooden table because it’s not buried under mail and keys and yesterday’s coffee cup. Conversations feel different too, less distracted, though maybe I’m reading too much into that. I think true elegance through simplicity means you’ve curated your surroundings so carefully that everything you see either serves you or delights you, and there’s no mental tax from objects you’re just tolerating. It’s not about deprivation—it’s about having exactly what you need and absolutely loving what you have. Which sounds kind of precious when I write it out, but there’s something genuinely freeing about walking into a room and feeling like every single thing in it belongs there, including you.
Turns out simplicity isn’t simple at all, but it might be worth the effort.
