How to Reduce Visual Clutter at Home: A Designer's Room-by-Room Reset
Updated: 24 hours ago
You can reduce visual clutter by clearing your surfaces, keeping only objects that earn their place, and giving everything else a closed home.
By Maya Sheinberger | 21.03.26
Visual clutter isn't dirt. It's everything your eye has to process before it can rest, from ten small objects on a shelf to the toaster that has lived on the counter since 2019.
Most of us clean our homes thoroughly and still don't feel calm in them. That's because the real problem is often a fear of emptiness. A bare shelf feels like a mistake, a white wall feels like an unfinished job, and so we keep filling. I think of it as noise. A home can be spotless and still be shouting at you.
Key takeaways
Visual clutter comes from too many objects competing for attention, not from a lack of cleaning.
Start with horizontal surfaces, because they change how a room feels fastest.
Keep one object that means something rather than ten that fill a gap.
Plan closed storage, or the clutter will come back.
Try the 15-minute surface test before you change the whole house.
Where visual clutter hides, room by room
Room | The noise | The reset |
Living room | Too many cushions and small objects | Keep the cushions you really lean on, and one blanket |
Kitchen | Appliances and jars on the counter | Store what you don't use daily, and gather oil and salt on one tray |
Shelves | Ten small items side by side | One object with meaning and some empty space |
Entrance | Keys, mail and bags on show | A closed cabinet with a place for each |
Why a cluttered room feels tiring
A cluttered room asks more of your attention. Brain-imaging research by McMains and Kastner at Princeton looked at what happens when several objects share your field of view, and found that they compete for processing in the visual cortex. Research on how people talk about their homes points the same way. In a study of 60 dual-income spouses published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, wives who described their homes in more stressful terms, including clutter and unfinished projects, had flatter daily cortisol slopes and a rise in depressed mood over the day. It's a correlation, so it doesn't prove that clutter causes stress. It does suggest that the way a home feels stays with us.
1. Clear the shelves first
Remove everything from one shelf, then return only what you would choose again. The feed is full of perfect shelves, and it's easy to end up buying candles you will never light, tiny vases that can't hold a stem, and heavy design books that mostly support the dust. When the eye has to hop between ten small things, it doesn't settle on any of them. Leave one piece that says something, and let the empty space around it do the rest.
2. Edit the sofa
A sofa should be sat on without a removal ceremony. If you need to move six cushions and three throws before anyone can sit down, the layers have become a burden. They look wonderful in a professional photo and far less so on a Tuesday. Keep the cushions you actually lean on and one blanket in a breathable fabric. In a warm climate like ours, you rarely need more than that.
3. Clear the kitchen counter
The true luxury of a kitchen is what isn't on the counter. Put the toaster in a cabinet, and gather the oil and salt on one small tray, which turns them into a defined work area instead of a scattered collection. Full counters make a kitchen look smaller, and a clear one makes you want to cook.
Good planning makes this far easier. In the OA apartment in Tel Aviv, a 100 m² home, we designed a hidden coffee niche that opens when you need it, a concealed door to a pantry that holds the washing machine, and a place for the robot vacuum in the island. The daily routine is all there, and none of it is on display.
4. Give clutter a closed home
Decluttering only lasts when everything you keep has a place behind a door. Otherwise the objects simply move from one surface to another. In the AA apartment, a custom entrance cabinet hides a structural column and the washing machine, so the first thing you see when you come home is calm rather than logistics. Open shelves can be lovely, but they ask for editing every week.
5. Leave one wall alone
An empty wall isn't a failure of design. The real test is whether you can look at a bare white wall and feel no urge to hang something on it. Before you add anything, live with the space for a while. A room needs somewhere for the eye to rest, and a minimalist home can stay warm when the materials do the talking.
The 15-minute surface test
You can test all of this in a quarter of an hour:
Choose one surface, such as the sideboard, the kitchen island or the entrance console.
Clear it completely and clean it.
Return only two things you truly love.
Leave it like that for three days.
Notice how it feels each time you walk past.
If it feels right, you already know what to do with the rest of the house.
Frequently asked questions
What is visual clutter?
Visual clutter is the amount of information your eye has to take in within a space: objects, colors, patterns and exposed items. A room can be perfectly clean and still be visually cluttered.
Where should I start decluttering?
Start with one horizontal surface you see every day, such as a sideboard or a kitchen counter. It takes minutes, and you will see the difference at once.
How do I declutter without my home feeling cold?
Remove objects rather than warmth. Keep natural materials, soft light and a few pieces with real meaning. Warmth comes from texture and light, not from quantity.
Should everything be hidden in closed storage?
No. Keep what you use and love within reach, and put the rest behind a door. The aim is a home you can rest in, not an empty showroom.
Do I need an interior designer to reduce clutter?
Not for editing your surfaces. A designer helps when the clutter is a planning problem, such as too little storage or no place for the laundry. These are five reasons to work with one.
Is your home in Tel Aviv or central Israel in need of a calmer plan, whether you live here or are managing it from abroad? Let's talk about it.
Maya Sheinberger is an interior designer with nearly 20 years of experience. She has run her independent studio since 2012, and it is based in Ramat Gan. She holds a B.Des with honors from the College of Management. Eight of her projects have won Archilovers Best Project awards, her work has appeared in more than 100 publications, and one of her Tel Aviv apartments features in the book The New Minimalist Style.
Photography @itaybenitphotographer · Styling @maya_livnat_harush
This post was inspired by my column on Mako (in Hebrew).
