Styling Your Home Like a Pro: Livarea Design Tips

Tastes are as varied as the demands for a beautiful home. There are various interior design styles, colour schemes and design trends. Here we present a brief overview of modern interiors with Scandinavian influences. If you take some design tips to heart, your home will certainly become even cosier.

Briefly about the Scandinavian interior design style: it is characterised by its linear and clear design language. True to the Bauhaus motto, form follows function. Light wood is often used, as it appears warm and is a renewable raw material such as spruce, pine and birch. Natural materials like cotton, linen and leather are very often used, as are glass and porcelain. As winters in Scandinavia are long and dark, this interior design style focuses on clear colours. Everything from pastel shades to vibrant colours is readily used. The patterns are strongly based on natural forms and are also used in abstract form as geometric shapes.

Product shown true to original. Room styling created by digital staging.

Embrace Colour

Consider each room in your home as a self-contained unit. The same colour doesn't have to be used in every room. To develop a harmonious colour scheme for each unit, take your time to look around. Which colour dominates the room? Pay attention to the ceiling, floor, walls, furniture, pictures, rugs etc. How many colours dominate the room? For a quicker overview, work with colour swatches from a colour chart or colour palettes (there are many colour charts online; Benjamin Moore offers a great selection with many gradations: http://bit.ly/2poKDGS). A mix of three to six colours is ideal, and it's optimal if three of these colours come from the same colour family. The aim is to define the main colour and combine it with 2-3 other colours. A colour that contrasts with the other colours can also be used. This gives the colour scheme more dynamism.

A colour scheme looks particularly harmonious if one or two colours are repeated several times in the room. Which colour you ultimately choose and how many depends entirely on your taste. Just give it a try.

Product shown true to original. Room styling created by digital staging.

Contrasts and Accents

Just as with colour, a conscious contrast is also recommended for the interior design itself. Don't stick too consistently to one style, as that tends to look rather boring. You quickly get the feeling that something is missing. And that's exactly what it's all about: variety and tension. This can be easily achieved with contrasts. With many smooth surfaces, a rough texture does a lot of good. Be it through a rough stone wall or a rustic wooden furniture piece. Linear, clear furniture tolerates graphic patterns very well. They are a beautiful counterpart, whether in the rug, in the cushions on the sofa or as pictures on the wall.

With seating furniture, you can certainly set accents. The armchair doesn't have to be the same model as the sofa; on the contrary, a different style in a different colour becomes a focal point here. This naturally also applies to chairs. However, at a long table with six or eight different chairs, the same colour connects and harmonises them again. The interplay between unity and contrast makes an interior appear harmonious.

Product shown true to original. Room styling created by digital staging.

Decoration

When it comes to decoration, the golden rule is that the decor shouldn't be too small-scale and should always be arranged in groups with an odd number. Whether on the table, on the shelf or on the windowsill, form groups that match thematically or in colour. Here too, you can play with colour accents and contrasts. Give it a try; you'll develop a feel for it after some time.

When hanging pictures, make sure not to hang them too high. Especially in the living room, pictures above the sofa are usually hung much too high. If you want to hang several pictures in a group, it's advisable to first lay them on the floor for an overview. This gives you a good impression of how the pictures harmonise with each other. Besides vases, figures, plants and so on, books are a very beautiful decoration. Especially on a side table, two or three books stacked on top of each other with a vase next to them looks very harmonious. With books, you can set many accents; they don't necessarily have to be sorted by size or colour, and one can even be left open. A bookshelf loses its rigidity if you arrange the books in a disordered way, some vertically and some horizontally.

Product shown true to original. Room styling created by digital staging.

More Light

Perhaps the most important aspect for a cosy home is the lighting. The larger a room, the more lights should be available. Various light sources truly make a room cosy. In addition to the main light, several smaller light sources from wall, pendant, and floor lamps are recommended. Candles should also not be forgotten; these can be arranged again in one or more groups. Instead of bedside lamps, pendant lights are also often used, either individually or in groups. It is particularly harmonious when light sources in a room are arranged at three different heights.

Product shown true to original. Room styling created by digital staging.

Mira Celini

Interior Designer at Livarea

As an Interior Designer at Livarea – one of Germany's leading online shops for designer furniture since 2012 – I assist customers with furnishing their homes. My tips come directly from practical experience: honest, inspiring, and always with an eye for the extraordinary.

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