Put your hand up if you’re constantly evolving your decor and interior design tastes? Those of you that love to style your homes, you’ll know all about what’s called ‘room ambiance’. It’s essentially, the character of the room that creates an atmosphere. You can feel it as you walk in as if you’re transported into another world. If done correctly, the impact on your psyche can be monumental. It can change the way you see your home forever.
When a room changes what you think about the things outside it, it means that your standards have just shifted. This is going to be a hot trend for 2020 as we’re seeing a massive change in home decor and interior design. What has been the norm for over 10 years, is slowly being given the old heave-ho. You may have already seen it occur, but in 2020, this trend of characterisation is going to take on new gear and here’s why.
THE STONEY MOUNTAIN
For such a long time, the living room has been untouchable. It’s been the one room in the modern home, that holds the most power with regards to interior design. It’s acted like a stoney mountain. Cold, unshakeable and set in its ways. However, the leather sofa is finally being toppled off the mountain. Leather sofas have been the gold standard for modern interior design. And yet, we’re now seeing more fabric sofas take the top spot for many households. Fabric sofas are more flexible, warmer and now with better material production standards, cotton is much more widely available as the cushion covering.
Low profile furniture has been seen as futuristic and sleek for over a decade. But as too the leather sofa, low coffee tables, and lounge chairs are being cast out. They’re being replaced with more traditionally levelled furniture. In other words, layering your living room is back in fashion. There should be different heights for sofas, tables, chairs, drawers, cabinets as well as ornaments.
IS NEUTRAL DEAD?
Gather around, hang your heads and weep for the end of the neutral era. For 10-plus years, neutral color palettes have ruled the roost. They have been the standard-bearers for what a modern home should be. On the other hand, oh well. Rejoice and sing high praises for the interior design Gods have blessed us all with a new standard for color themes and palettes. Abstract shades and tones are the future and they might be with us for quite some time. Unlike the neutral powerhouse pairing of black and white, or grey and white, the abstract color scheme is a lot more lively. It encourages a more carefree life, it’s more playful and wills you on to be more experimental with shapes and sizes. But like all contemporary interior trends, it comes with a practical element and not just purely focussing on aesthetics. Geometric patterns, together with bolder, outlandish colours, the abstract style wants to push the futuristic element of home decor even further. Are you ready to acknowledge that, finally neutral is dead and abstract has taken up the torch as the new gold standard? I’ll be honest, I’m not!
HUMBLE & COMFORTABLE
The thing about fashion is, the rarer the item or thing, the more popular or chic it becomes. When all the homes in your street, including your own, look pretty much the same, nothing is fashionable. You can’t even say that your home has a unique style anymore. The reason why this has occurred is that, as the years have gone on, modern comforts have evolved and become more widespread. So many of us have got leather sofas, tonnes have Egyptian cotton cushions and pillows, many of us have got a high-quality rug in our homes. But this has saturated the modern home with lots of things that, although comfortable, still wish to be stylish and prudently elegant and if Instagram is anything to go by, then you’ll see that many homes end up looking the same.
The trend you’re going to see more and more of in 2020, is humble comfort. Knitted sofa cushions, woollen throws over the chairs and even things like knitted pouffes. You will even see woollen curtains with pom-poms that have been knitted or made from high-quality wool. For those who would like some kind of luxury and humble comfort, you have the choice of buying a Merino wool rug or merino wool lampshades. All in all, get ready to see more honest and down to earth comfort in homes and feeling textures that are soft to the touch. Consequently, these will keep your home warm for the winter too.
BACK TO THE LOUNGE
Lord knows for how many decades the television has behaved like a gravity vortex, sucking all the decor in toward it. No more of this. Another interior trend you’re going to witness in 2020 will be about not focussing the decor to one area of the room. Essentially, the modern living room will go back to the lounge style. Lounges offer plenty of comfort and style, but they provide you with a more down-to-earth experience by having each item of furniture do its own thing. Different sofas could be facing different walls. Your chairs could be facing the window and looking out. The television might not even be in the living room anymore!
For those of you who love the thought of having a living room that isn’t focussed on a piece of entertainment technology, you’re in luck. The classic Victorian Era ornaments are also coming back in fashion. African animals carved out of wood and intricate stone busts are excellent features in any home. Things you’ve accumulated from around the world should also be given a place or two in your lounge. If you have a souvenir from your trip to Japan, stand it on the window sill or coffee table. Perhaps you have a model car or airplane that you bought from a seaside trip in our beautiful UK. Hang or place it in the cabinet or dining table.
EXPERIMENTAL ART
The running theme for all trends in 2020, seems to be more creative, more bravery and more experimentation. This is what always happens when a new style is being born. You didn’t think the transition from old to new was going to be so smooth, did you? Giving each room it’s own unique character can be done just by the experimental artwork you have. You could give each room words in the form of wall art stickers which you can place onto your wallpaper. Have ‘Relax’ for your bathroom and ‘Teatime’ for your living room. You could also have ‘spice’ or ‘bake’ in the kitchen. If you have a newborn baby, write his or her name on the wall next to the crib. It’s blunt and obvious, but since the stickers blend into the wall, they can be made subtle with a little extra help.
Hanging 3D artwork is highly recommended for those of you that really love something bold and different. Perhaps the moulded face of a lion roaring, sticking out of your wall in the bedroom could be something you might be interested in. Even something like a 3D mirror frame would be a brilliant addition to your home. Something that you can touch and feel. If you really want to make a bold move, you could always add something like a neon sign to feature in the room. There are so many different stylish ideas you can try out! The artwork has a new place in the home and thankfully, it’s accepted more than the previous era.
Ding dong, neutral has died. We now usher in the era of abstract experimentation. Honest and humble comfort shall be welcomed into the home without any pretence of being holier-than-thou. Most of all, we need to accept a return to the traditional lounge for our living room. Do we need to make it a room purely for relaxation and not entertaining?
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!
