HIS & HERS ASKS: COULD IT BE TIME TO GIVE YOUR INTERIOR DESIGN SCHEME A LITTLE EDGE BY EMBRACING SOME INDUSTRIAL STYLE?
For a lot of people, it can be difficult to find the right tone for the design of their home. After all, you want to find a decent balance between your own personality and what will look good in your home. The problem is, in trying to find that balance, a lot of people end up with relatively bland, generic looking home.
Now, this isn’t always a bad thing. After all, some people want a home that’s something of a blank slate so that they can really make an impact with decorations and accessories. However, a lot of people would rather that their personality came out in the house itself. This can be especially challenging if you’re a relatively young person or you want to bring a trendy, slightly hipsterish style to your home. But if that’s the style you’re looking for, then there’s no better way to create it than by embracing industrial design trends. Here are a few ways to bringing this wonderful chic style into your home and embrace the feeling of the bright lights and the big city.
Behind the scenes:
A lot of the charm in industrial design comes from the fact that you’re taking things that, in any other style, would be hidden away and putting them front and center. This means that you should embrace things like exposed brickwork and piping throughout your home. Exposed vertical radiators like the kind you can find from somewhere like Only Radiators work just as well. Exposing the kinds of things that you’d normally keep hidden is a great way to bring a touch of industrial chic into any home.
Clean lines:
Some interior design styles, like rustic and shabby chic, favour asymmetry and naturalistic lines that make things seem as though they’ve been placed in a random, almost haphazard manner. This does not work with industrial design. When building an industrial style into your home, you need to make sure that your lines are clean and crisp at all times. This means that you’re better off with metal furniture with sharp, clear angles rather than more ornate wooden furniture. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but they usually work specifically because of how much they stand out from the rest of the industrial style. If you’re going to try something more unusual, make sure that you’re doing so carefully.
Space:
One of the key elements of any industrial design style is that you need to have enough space to make it work. If you’re living in a cramped space, then there’s a chance that the whole thing could start to feel cramped and dark. With space, you not only have large open areas to separate the sharp angles of the decor, but you also get to let a great deal of light into your home at all times. Without a lot of light, you’re never going to get the kind of warmth and atmosphere that you need to make an industrial styled property feel like a home. Of course, you don’t need a huge home to do this; you just need to be able to use the space well. Create clear lines of movement throughout the room and try not to fill up too much floor space with unneeded clutter.
Minimalism:
Speaking of unneeded clutter, there is one word that often goes right along with industrial styles: minimalism. A cluttered home in an industrial style just ends up looking even messier and more unpleasant than it would otherwise. Decorations that you have should exist to make a statement against the simplicity of the interior, and there’s no way that they can do that if they have to share space with dozens of other knickknacks and trinkets. It’s time to start being brutal with what you keep and what you throw away. Compared to bohemian or Victorian design schemes, industrial homes need a lot of blank space in order for you to have the breathing room that you really need. Embracing a more minimalist design philosophy isn’t always that difficult, but there are plenty of resources online to help you get started.
It might sometimes feel as though an industrial style could make your home feel cold and lacking in personality. In order to prevent this from happening you need to balance it with more traditionally domestic styles. Decorations, blankets, cushions and other things that will increase the comfort of your home are a great counterpoint to the classic industrial style you’re trying to create.
We’re very proud to bring you this feature in association with Only Radiators.