Seven Popular Interior Design Styles
Deciding how to decorate your home can be overwhelming. It’s important to start at Square 1 by asking yourself what your personal design style is. Learn about seven popular interior design styles in this video by The Kinwoven Home:
Bohemian: This is a carefree and colorful style; the key is to create a purposeful messy look. This style incorporates rich textures like jute, linen and burlap, lots of color (especially earthy warm colors), metals, woods, rugs, poufs with embellishments, artifacts and cultural items, flea market finds, and unconventional displays.
Contemporary: This style is clean and open with lots of neutrals and curved lines. To design in this style, use a neutral palette along with color blocks of rugs, pillows or artwork. Invest in simple furniture that uses natural fibers like linen or silk. Incorporate stone, glass, metal, and accessories and rugs with geometric pattern.
Mid-Century Modern: Similar to contemporary in that it uses a lot of neutrals, minimalist silhouettes and natural materials like wood or linen, this style is specific to the 1950’s and is all about functionality. You’ll see a lot of smaller pieces and an open and airy floor plan. Mid-century modern places a heavy focus on lighting; use pendant lights or simple side table lamps to keep it looking sleek. Use a lot of woods, keep your walls clean and white, and decorate with some vintage accessories.
Traditional: If you like your home to be warm and comforting, then this style is the way to go. Traditional style is very calm and very predictable, with warmer color palettes (peaches, greens, golds) and a lot of bronze and wood tones that make the home feel very inviting. Floral, paisley, stripes and plaid prints are very common and show up on drapes, pillows or rugs. Traditional homes tend to have heavier regal furniture and accessories like books, chandeliers, wrought iron with intricate designs, mirrors and sconces.
Minimalism: This style take modern one step further. Minimalists only pick furniture pieces and accessories that they absolutely need. There’s an empty space feeling in a minimalist home – a lot of open space and absolutely no clutter or “stuff”. You can still decorate by using a single piece of art as a focal point, using a lot of grays and pastels in your accent pillows, and using textures in different shades of white.
Coastal: Your style is probably coastal if you love the beach and love bringing it into your home. A coastal home should feel light and airy with a lot of sand colors and bright whites and greens and blues mixed in (mostly in stripes). Use natural upholstery like linen, sea grass, wicker and wood detailing. Accessorize with seashells, jute rope, sailboats and navigational maps. Light and bright is also very important in the coastal beach vibe. Let the light pour in from your windows.
Farmhouse: The farmhouse style is full of character and charm, but it is also very savvy. If you like handy and practical decorations with some sophistication and style, then you probably have a farmhouse style (think “Chip and Joanna from Fixer Upper” style). This style combines vintage finds with newer pieces. Add in wrought iron, some utilitarian fixtures and shiplap. You can also do a lot of DIY projects within this style to upcycle old pieces to make them look more farmhouse and accessorize with pieces like vintage boxes, bubble lighting and antique signage.
