5 interior design tips and practices for that wow factor, tips from West London interior designer

Our living spaces are meant to tingle our senses, bring delight and pleasure with every experience. But why stop on the subtlety if you can inject an element of surprise.

Here are five ways to shake up a dreary room and make it worth walking into.

1. Add Quirky and Cool Pieces

A little bit of weird makes a room feel like somebody actually lives in it.

Paintings of busts that have an animal head planted on a human chest or shoulders, cocoon-like sofas, and chairs, overmantels featuring dried flowers encased in resin, and other unusual décor pieces will surely amp up your interior space.

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2. Juxtapose

Contrast works in any interior, but look for a pairing that is genuinely out of the norm.

Say strategically placing a bright yellow winged-sofa with black polka dots into a classic French-styled living room. Or, illuminate your bathroom with a large chandelier smack in the middle with cascading golden feathers.

3. Showcase Texture

We are used to playing around with colour, form, and illumination, but texture can lift the look of a room just as much.

Start with the walls. If you’re tired with the same old same old colour-washed walling, then you’re in for some treat. Three dimensional wallpapers, stucco concrete walls, mural or stencilled surfaces, and wood panels with staggered thickness. You can even add vertical vegetation on your wall as well.

4. Knockout Floor Transitions

Forget about transition strips, instead use flooring that moves from one room to the next with ease. Hexagonal concrete floor tiles with grey and white shades meet wood planks is a trendy design, but you can also do other materials such as ceramic tiles and red oak panels.

Not only do they look good but it’s a great way to define areas especially for open plans with living, dining, and kitchen areas.

5. Interplay of Light and Shadows

Make your room dabble with the beauty of lights and shadows. A luminaire may not be enough. Add backlit plates on the face of your kitchen island, install strip lights underneath your stair nosing or invest in self-illuminating furniture such as sofa chairs and tables.

Aside from adding a variety of light sources, make sure to consider colour and texture. Remember that the texture changes to the direction and quality of the light and can also be affected by several light sources. This means in diffused light, texture can appear less defined, but a wider area of texture is visible. While indirect light, the texture is very visible but confined in a smaller area.

Takeaway:

An unexpected interior makes a room worth experiencing. A striking interior is not to everybody’s taste though, and some people want something quieter and more personal. A room can be beautiful or it can be striking, and the two are different jobs.

If you want advice on an interior in London, our own designers work on residential and commercial rooms. Tell us about the room, or call the studio on 020 7731 6841.