Interior Design Basics: Style

To begin any interior decorating project you need to decide what style to create your home interior so it is a space that feels good for you to live in. Here are a few of most popular styles.

Modern Minimalist: Style of extreme accuracy with nothing to much and no heavy backgrounds. The emphasis is on simplicity. Colors are dull or bright but flashing. Pieces are geometric shapes of square, rectangular and round. Surfaces are clean and no details. Minimalist modern style illustrates the simplified form.

Classic: Refined style, rich in details that are found in the structure of furniture, lighting, etc., as well as in fabric prints. The furniture is the art. Carved or inlaid and applied details. Decorated with floral elements, vegetable, leaf motifs or scenes drawn from legends.

Classic Updated:  Refined and elegant. Classic form details are found in a new approach. The forms preserve the structure of old forms or parts in general updating them sometimes or some elements of a furniture style combined with modern elements, creating the fusion between old and new. Finishing parts are in a new approach: painted and varnished with different and innovative colors, surface gold or silver finished with patina or serigraphic.

Rustic:  style structure is crude with rough details. Structure elements of furniture and lighting can be in tree trunks, logs, branches, jute. Style is found in mountain vacation homes and rural areas.

Elegant Country: Rural style is elegant with influences from English, French or Scandinavian classic pure style. Rural chic. Finishes are bright colors with white and pastel. Forms are traditional. Surfaces are painted and sometimes have a slight patina.

Retro: Refers to 50's, 60's or 70's. In that period it is anticipated design of pieces to come. A playful approach with a funny structure of form, the play of colors and prints. New approaches in design forms, yet within classic design lines. Prints with geometric shapes, lines, plaid or printed with illustrations of the Pop Art style.

Contemporary: Modern, new and cool. Colors are balanced and warm.. Finishes are warm and wood. Appearance to look more polished. Textile use of leather, velvet, plush, printed. Scandinavian modern style can be defined as a contemporary style.

High-Tech: An innovative modern style and the emphasis on detail that is not random but part of the structure. Details of screws, rivets, wheels, rough metal are specific to this style. The finishes are often metal, glass, plastic, wood and leather. The colors are often dull gray, white and small amounts of black.

Eclectic: A combination of various styles of furniture, such as, traditional with modern, rustic with high-tech.  The look is brought together through the use of color, texture, shape and finish.