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What is Interior Design style?
Interior Design, like any art form, has different categories or styles, but what really is style?
An interior design style simply encompasses the visual aspects of your home that create a signature look. These aspects include color, furniture, décor, lighting, etc. When analyzing the most popular interior design styles, you’ll find they are typically influenced by an outside factor or way of life that caused them to come together with the way they did.
For example, Mid-Century Modern came to be with the Industrial Revolution as Americans were inventing and making new materials popular and more accessible. The Bohemian style reflects a lifestyle of traveling and valuing craftsmanship in its many forms.
Why do I need to Find my Style?
Finding your interior design style will help greatly in making your home appear cohesive and visually pleasing. While you don’t have to choose just one, it’s important to narrow down 2-3 styles that inspire your choices in color, furniture, décor, and lighting. Without identifying and implementing your style into your home, it can look disconnected or jumbled. Not to mention, interior design is a method of expressing yourself. You want guests to come into your home and be able to see your personality displayed in the design choices.
Identifying and sticking to particular styles is also a wonderful way for beginner designers to create spaces that look professionally done. Making sure your home has a cohesive style will make it look like you spend tons of money to hire a personal designer when you really did all the work yourself.
Popular Interior Design Styles
Traditional
Traditional interior design is all about infusing historical ideals into a timeless look. It takes inspiration from the 18th and 19th centuries. Specifically, the design details that were commonly used by royalty. Traditional design features warm, rich colors and tones, and often displays very ornate antique pieces.
Contemporary
Contemporary design is all about minimalism and clean, sleek silhouettes. A contemporary home often features neutral colors, geometric shapes, and hardwood, tile, vinyl, or concrete floors. Contemporary design uses space, shapes, and material to express itself, rather than items.
Mid-Century Modern
This style takes inspiration from the designs that were most popular in the mid-20th century. Teak wood was most commonly used for its luxurious appearance and durability. However, it also displays an interesting combination of natural and man-made materials such as wood, metal, glass, and vinyl. This design style is known for its unique shapes and bold accents of color.
Bohemian
The bohemian style is all about the worldly, eclectic look. It places importance on hand-crafted pieces that look like they could’ve been accumulated over many years of traveling the globe. Bohemian style has no rules when it comes to color. You can choose bright pops of color, or have an all-neutral home and still fit in. Bohemian design often features natural materials such as wood, cane, macramé, or stone.
Scandinavian
Hailing from the Nordic region of the world, the Scandinavian style combines the ultra-minimalism of Contemporary and emphasis on the nature of Bohemian. In a Scandinavian home, you can almost always expect light wood floors, white walls, and heaps of natural light. Modern stores like IKEA have popularized Scandinavian furniture for home designs, but its roots stretch back much further.
Cottage Core
Cottage core design appears exactly as it sounds. The goal is to make the interior of your home, even if it resides in a bustling city, appear as though you’re in a tiny, quaint cottage in the middle of the forest. This style has child-like freedom to it that evokes feelings of nostalgia. To achieve a cottage core look, utilize natural materials, incorporate antique and vintage pieces, and make sure your home appears well-loved and lived in. Nothing should be too perfect or pristine.
Finding Your Style
Now that you know the basic rundown of some of the most popular interior design styles right now, it’s time to find which one you connect with the most. Here are some tips for finding your interior design style.
Do your research
Take the time to look into the various design styles that are trending right now. This can be through Google, Pinterest, or you can even bust out some interior design magazines if you’re old-fashioned. Search different styles and take note of what you like and don’t like about them. Which furniture pieces do you think are cool? What color palette do you like? This can all help you narrow down your style.
Take a quiz!
There are tons of great interior design quizzes online nowadays. These quizzes are often created by very reputable sources such as HGTV. If you’ve done some research and are still feeling confused or undecided, consider taking one of these quizzes to help!
Look at the pieces you already own
Often times our style is staring us in the face and we don’t even know it. Now that you’ve done the research and know the characteristics of each style, look at the pieces you already own. Which style do these items fall into? Look at your closet! What color clothes are you gravitated towards? Consider friend’s homes you’ve been in and enjoyed. Ask them what their style is!
Consider your lifestyle
As we mentioned previously, style is often influenced by lifestyle. If you have 3+ children, you might need a style that emphasizes functionality. If you have tons of family photos and trinkets you’ve accumulated over the years that you’re not ready to part with, minimalism might not be your jam.
Final Thoughts
Once you’ve put in the work to identify your interior design style, you should notice that it’s much easier to make design decisions when it comes to your home. Your style may fluctuate with the ever-changing trends and changes within yourself and your lifestyle, and that’s ok! Nothing is meant to be completely stagnant. Now you know that, when that does happen, you have the tools to identify your style and can create a wonderful home environment that you’ll be excited to wake up in and return to every day.
Kamry Bram says
I would like some ideas on how to decorate a Sun Room, maybe some pictures etc. I am a young Mom 23, with 2 rambunctious toddlers 3 and 4