A “contemporary” interior
– September 19th, 2018 –
Totally inspired by my friend who had just bought a very contemporary home, I decided to discuss contemporary design in this blog.
Contemporary interiors can be challenging to design. Why? Well, let’s talk about the living room, usually these types of interiors just have a few pieces in the living. For furniture, a large sofa, one coffee table and maybe a lounge chair, a lamp, rug and hardly any decor pieces. To work without décor pieces, often collectibles, which have personal meaning to a person, will make it harder to create a personal design. And on top of that, looking for a contemporary look, the colour scheme will be quite neutral and straight lines are used.
So, hardly any furniture or decor pieces to work with combined with neutral colours and sleek lines, it will be very easy to end up with a boring non personal living space.
But let’s first start with the question; what does a “contemporary style” living room look like? In my view, as I know people have different opinions on this subject, contemporary is a style that has been a trend since maybe end of last century starting the beginning of this century. To me the following line:
“Contemporary design is ever-changing. It is of the moment.”
..is not the case anymore. I would not call current design a contemporary design style, it is way too opulent and colourful for that. And if we do feel and can agree upon that contemporary does has the same meaning as current “in the moment” design, well, then we need to find a new word for the style I and many more refer to as “contemporary”.
An example of a modern interior
Just go a little bit back in time, basically the same happened to the word “modern” and what was considered a “modern” interior during the second half of the last century. End of the last century a “modern style” interior was no longer “in the moment” the way it was around the sixties and as a result of that we took on the word contemporary to describe the then current trend.
To go back to my view of “contemporary style”, I used some pictures from Pinterest that reflect that style in this mood board.
Straight lines, some furniture pieces, hardly any decor pieces and a lamp here and there and neutral tones. Now how can we make sure these interiors will look interesting, feel warm and personal.
To me the most important thing is to use a type material only once or perhaps twice in one room. For instance take a woollen rug, stone/tiles on the floor, wood for a console, steel or concrete coffee table, linen blend for the sofa and a leather chair. When you use many natural materials, you will keep the interior interesting while using neutral tones and relatively view pieces. The top picture above to me seems most ‘boring’, this is probably because the black wood is used to often; in the chairs, the console and the coffee table.
Below an example of how neutral materials can provide an interesting palette.
Furthermore make sure that the walls or ceilings are not just painted but decorate them with masculine materials such as brick, wood, stone, but just one wall, don’t overdo! If you would like to use a wallpaper, then maybe a leather plain type will work.
Please refer to Occhio.de website for these lights
For lights, although not many lamps for decor purposes are used, you should have architectural lighting. Very cleverly done in the wooden TV console left, as you can see, it makes the room come to life. While looking at the middle picture the lights are switched off or just forgotten to install in the console, either way without lights it just looks a lot less interesting.
See above a plain wall made interesting with lights.
Last but not least, try to get interesting artwork which you love to make it personal. This can be a sculpture and/or a wall-hanging. If you place any decor items make sure they are contemporary as well, but interesting, like that white bowl on the table.
Below what would be my selection for a contemporary style board;
From top left; the wallpaper is from Elitis; Anguille, the TV wall is from Rimadesio, the lamp is from Grok, the sofa is from Living Divani; extra soft, the art installation is from Steven Naifeh, the side tables are from Linteloo; Obi coffee tables, the rug is from the Rug Company; Swirl and the black ceramic bowl is from Eric Boos.