Maximalist design is having a moment, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.
I used to think maximalism was just about throwing every colorful thing you owned into a room and calling it “eclectic,” but turns out there’s actually some method to the madness—or at least, that’s what interior designers keep telling me. The basic idea is layering: you’re stacking patterns on patterns, mixing florals with geometrics, adding in some animal prints for good measure, and somehow it’s supposed to look intentional rather than like your grandmother’s attic exploded. Dorothy Draper pioneered this approach back in the 1930s and 40s, using bold cabbage-rose prints and baroque plasterwork in hotels that made people feel like they’d walked into a fever dream. Her philosophy was that more is more, which sounds exhausting but also kind of liberating when you think about it.
Here’s the thing: maximalism requires confidence bordering on recklessness. You can’t second-guess whether that zebra-print ottoman clashes with your paisley curtains—you just commit. I’ve seen rooms that shouldn’t work on paper but somehow do in practice, like this apartment in Brooklyn where the owner mixed Moroccan tiles with Victorian wallpaper and mid-century furniture, and it felt cohesive in a way I definately couldn’t explain.
The Psychological Weight of Living in a Kaleidoscope That Never Stops Spinning
There’s research suggesting that our environments affect our mental states more than we realize—roughly 70% of people report feeling more energized in colorful spaces, give or take, though I’m not sure how they measured “energized” exactly. Maximalist rooms are supposed to stimulate creativity and conversation, which sounds great until you’re trying to fall asleep and your brain won’t stop processing all the visual input from that hand-painted mural of peacocks on your bedroom wall. Some designers argue that the key is creating “anchors”—neutral spaces where your eye can rest between all the chaos. Others say that’s cowardice and you should just paint your ceiling fuchsia and be done with it.
Anyway, the color theory gets complicated.
Maximalists love talking about the 60-30-10 rule, but then they immediatley break it by using seven accent colors instead of one, which kind of defeats the purpose but also creates this energetic tension that minimalism can never achieve. The trick—wait, maybe “trick” is the wrong word—the approach involves balancing warm and cool tones so the room doesn’t feel like it’s vibrating. Jewel tones are popular right now: emerald greens, sapphire blues, ruby reds, all layered together like you’re living inside a Fabergé egg. I guess it makes sense that after years of grey-and-white minimalism, people are craving something that feels alive, even if it also feels a bit overwhelming.
When Pattern Clashing Becomes a Legitimate Design Philosophy Instead of a Mistake
The pattern-mixing thing is where maximalism either succeeds brilliantly or fails spectacularly, with very little middle ground. Designers will tell you to vary the scale—pair large florals with small geometrics, mix stripes with paisleys—but honestly, I think some people just have an intuitive sense for what works and the rest of us are guessing. There’s this theory that patterns should share at least one color to tie them together, which sounds reasonable until you see a room where nothing matches and it still somehow looks intentional.
I’ve noticed maximalist spaces tend to accumulate objects obsessively: vintage books stacked on every surface, collections of ceramics crowding the shelves, walls covered in mismatched frames. It’s like the room is telling a story, except the story is long and rambling and occasionally contradicts itself, which maybe makes it more honest than those perfectly curated minimalist spaces that feel like nobody actually lives there. The emotional experience of maximalism is complicated—it can feel joyful and suffocating at the same time, comforting in its excess but also exhausting in its demands for attention.
