When talking about interior design styles I think it’s important to begin with how our taste in interiors is quite often a true reflection of our own personalities, our own lived experiences and aspirations. Embodying a particular interior design style in your home can say a lot about you as a person if you look close enough. What’s your style and what does it say about you? Here’s mine…
Interior Design Style Influences
Reflecting on my own interior design style/taste at home, I am very aware of how much I was influenced by my own parents’ house. Not just my childhood home, but my childhood. We often travelled to Europe where I became mesmerised by everything from the buildings to the art, to the symmetry and colour, all things that still excite me today when I return. This appreciation led me to study the history of art at school, as I was always very artistic throughout my education, enjoying painting, pottery, anything that allowed me to be creative, and then onto studying Interior Design after school.
Attracted to Detail
Fast forward to today, and I am still inspired by European design; French, Italian, Spanish… design where there is detail. Where the architecture has history, scale. Here in Australia I am naturally drawn to terrace houses; I like Victorian designs with high ceilings with their unique mouldings, cornices and details. That’s about as ‘old’ as you can get here in Sydney.
A significant part of my role as an interior designer is to ensure that the details, that are often forgotten about, are considered part of a cohesive design. The devil really is in the details, regardless of your interior design style. Take the example of a door – then there’s a frame, an architrave, and there might be windows too. When I design, we create layers. When things are flat, they don’t have the same impact or interest for me. Interior design styles used within the home need to consider the original details of a home, or create new wonderful ones.
Combining the old with the new
Honouring the history of a home is important, but that doesn’t restrict creativity in terms of combining different interior design style elements into a home. I have visited beautiful houses in France that have preserved intricate features such as cornices and architraves, complemented by modern and contemporary furniture, with clean lines that add a different dimension to the space. Combining the old world with the new, with clever use of design.
No matter which way you choose to do it; antique furniture can give depth to a contemporary home, and contemporary furniture can breathe life into an older home. It makes it interesting, again another layer to design that makes it work, it’s unexpected almost.
Interior Design Style – feminine vs masculine
When considering my own interior design style, I realised that I do have a more feminine approach. I found this quite interesting and surprising, as personally, the way I dress isn’t feminine in the traditional sense (think florals, dresses, skirts). My own style is a sharp trouser suit or crisp plain t-shirt, and everything is always quite neutral or dark tones (and flat shoes or sneakers!).
But my interior design style is much more feminine. I prefer details to minimalist, soft finishes rather than sharp lines. When it comes to furniture, if things are very heavy, I am not attracted to them either. Being a mother (and now a grandmother), I feel that perhaps my feminine influence in my own interior design style reflects my desire to make my home feel like a space for my family to feel comfortable, feel familiar and timeless, feel loved. And good interior design achieves this, effortlessly.
Part 2 will explore how we approach our projects when clients have a particular interior design style that they would like to incorporate into their home, and how we achieve this. If you are interested in working with us please reach out to our studio through our website or give us a call at the studio.
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