If you love giving your home a new look at the commencement of each new season, then you may be considering hiring an interior designer. Doing so can set you back up to approximately $300 per hour, which can add up if you wish to work on several rooms.
If you are on a budget, there is no reason why you cannot undertake this task yourself – particularly if you limit yourself to decorative changes and leave those requiring major renovation to later. To make your home feel cosier, more comfortable, and more visually appealing, the following hot trends for Winter 2021 may inspire.
Designing a Cosy Bedroom
In addition to melting marshmallows over the fireplace and chilling out with friends and loved ones while sipping on hot cocoa in the living room, as the temperature drops, reading a best-seller or working on your laptop in bed begins to sound a lot more appealing. To turn your bedroom into a wintery haven, switch to warmer blankets, upgrade your bedsheets to soft materials like flannel and fleece, and add texture with pillows and throws.
Home and Gardens defines the ‘maximalist’ trend as particularly strong this season. Achieve it in the bedroom by mixing complementary and contrasting patterns (think checks and stripes, or paisley and stripes), using a wide array of colors, hand-painting walls and furniture, and considering artistic touches such as murals depicting wildlife, landscapes, and other universally appealing imagery.
Contemporary Country Looks
Spaces like the living room will be taking on a warmer look and feel thanks to warm amber furniture, floral prints, and hand-made embroidered decorative pieces. Rustic styles work best when they are present in various spaces in a home. It comprises a mix of modern and rustic accessories and details inspired by the Great Outdoors.
Try choosing items that are organic and natural – think a reclaimed wood coffee table, paintings or sculptures representing outdoor wildlife, a stone accent wall, or wrought iron candelabra chandeliers or standing candle lamps. For the winter season, consider sofas or cushions in prints like gingham or houndstooth and materials like velvet or cashmere.
Touch-Me Textures
If you love going into sensory overdrive and touching all things soft and fluffy, Winter 2021 is definitely your dream season. Boucle, velvet, and natural linen are ideas for signature pieces such as rugs, coffee table chairs, or chaise longues. Even walls are taking on richer textures via panels, tiles, gold-leaf effects, and linen looks.
It just makes you want to run your hands across them when you walk from one room to another. If investing in new furniture pieces isn’t in your plans, you can still splurge on a few small items like furry cushions, a small pouffe, or a small natural linen carpet runner.
Biophilic Design
This design trend has been hitting hard and will probably continue to do so throughout the winter, spring, and summer. Biophilic design essentially seeks to bridge the divide between the inside and outside world, based on the plentiful benefits that living close to nature can bestow on human health (including stress relief, enhanced focus, and improved productivity).
Biophilic design involves much more than bringing plants indoors. It also relies on the use of materials, colors, shapes, and patterns that can be found in nature. It can involve painting a wall moss or leaf green, using wallpaper bearing forest or jungle imagery, or investing in a furniture piece or two that is inspired by the curve or shape of outdoor features. Biophilic design is also about copying the spatial elements contained in nature (think caves, stepping stones, ponds, and the like).
You can emulate these small-scale via a small indoor fountain, the use of large (or small) stepping stones as decorative elements, and the creation of natural “cave-like” spaces indoors. Think of a personal reading space by the window with overhanging vines. The effect is one of being embraced by nature and ‘hidden’ from the ‘creatures’ that inhabit the outside world.
Vintage Personality
There was a time around a decade ago when the coolest interiors (think Kanye West’s beautiful Los Angeles Home) were so minimalist in spirit that they contained hardly anything that did not have an immediate, pressing use. Bearing in mind the challenges that the past couple of years have posed worldwide, homeowners are placing a new value on their homes as an escape.
A warm, cosy, inviting space filled with color and meaningful details which are not necessarily practical but which feed the human penchant for beauty. Vintage pieces and furniture have therefore made a big comeback. Consider an antique desk for your remote work office, antique brass planters, or vintage metal weights decorating the kitchen shelf
Travel-Inspired Interiors
This trend is closely related to the maximalist design trend because it incorporates colors, trends, and pieces from different countries and eras. It’s all about celebrating and bringing travel memories to life. A few of its typical elements include old travel trunks, fabrics made according to local tradition in the places one has visited, wallpaper paying homage to natural landscapes from afar or close by, traditional rugs bearing symbolic patterns and symbols, and more.
If you’re planning on giving your home a new look this winter, the good news is that you can feel free to include the many items you have collected over the years. Maximalism is in and that means that contrasting patterns, colors, and inspirations are as welcome as well-planned interiors focusing on one theme – such as country-style living. Whichever style you choose, try to make nature a part of your game. The biophilic trend is flaming hot and it looks like it’s here to stay.
