WHAT’S YOUR INTERIOR DESIGN STYLE?
Your home is your space, your sanctuary. It should be your favourite place in the entire world. You should feel that it reflects who you are. Comforted by its walls. Hugged by the textures within, and relaxed in its presence. This is a big ask of some bricks and mortar, but this is exactly what those bricks can do when you really turn them into your home.
Often people wonder if the space will feel like it is theirs if they’ve worked with a designer, concerned we will wash away the sentiment and make it 'perfect'. In fact, we do the opposite. Our clients become our muses as we delve into their worlds.
Our approach to design involves working with you to unearth your sense of home. We work with all of our clients to discover what we call their their 'core style'. For example, Studio Dean’s core style is “quiet luxury”. To find this we explore what makes you happy regardless of if it 'fits' in your home.
We work with you to understand the things that matter to you. The tapestry your grandma made, the photo you took on your honeymoon, the bench you tried to make when you were dreaming of life as a carpenter. We elevate them, curate them and create a space for them and you to feel at home in.
Our role is to find what the elusive feeling of home looks like for each and every client and bring it to life.
A renovated home in Newcastle where the clients were drawn to lines and angles in every part of the process.
DON’T OVERTHINK IT.
So how do we find 'home'? We take it back to basics. Step away from the screen!
The fundamental way of finding your core style is to explore you, and you can't do this when you are tied to the algorithm of social media. We know everyone loves Pinterest and Instagram, but we see cases of "Pinterest Blindness" on a daily basis.
These platforms are awesome, we love them, but they are computer programs not creative thinkers! Their goal is to keep you scrolling. They serve you what you have already 'liked'. They know if you have already liked or pinned a fireplace with a large mirror over it, so you must like that. They send you more of the same, you keep pinning and liking, and stay on their platform. But this is just an echo chamber of what you initially searched for, not an exploration of what you love. It is not where you find your core style.
Instead, to find your sense of 'home' go back to basics:
Think about spaces you visit that you love - is it a day at the beach, a cosy coffee shop, an art gallery? Where are you happiest? Why are you happy there? Is it the colours, the textures, the sounds? We are drawn in to places that ‘feel right’ and your home should be the most ‘right’ place of all.
Take a look in your wardrobe, what do you wear? It is a sea of black and white or a plethora of colour? You will probably reflect this in some ways in your interior loves.
Go old school! Buy a load of magazines, make sure they're design mags, not the more mainstream 'home makeover' types - they'll just amplify the algorithm. Try Arch Digest, Domino, Apartment Therapy, World Of Interiors, Living etc, Elle Decoration... there are loads on the market. The most important thing is they are not the same as you have seen before. Grab a coffee, sit in your favourite spot and just look. Don't think 'oh I wonder if that would 'go' in my kitchen' or 'I could never live in such a tidy house'. Instead look at them as art. Do you like it?
These moves away from algorithms are what we do in our style meetings with clients. We share images of all styles, and chat through them, discuss how they make our clients feel. When they are drawn to an image we explore what drew them in. Its amazing what you can take from an hour over a coffee just looking at images and chatting about them! It forms the basis our design for the client.
This understanding of their style is how we truly create a home for them and not a generic show home.
A client for whom colour was her lifeblood, her clothes, her world, her personality were all bursting with colour.
Our designs come from our clients genuine loves and from there we create beauty.
DETERMINE THE COMMON THREADS.
After the style meeting we disappear back to the Studio and surround ourselves with everything our clients loved.
We immerse ourselves in their loves, and we start to look for themes, trends and special objects or patterns they picked out. There is always a theme, some are harder to spot than others, but the core style always comes through because it is a part of them. It is often not a specific look, more a feeling. It's a perfect Sunday afternoon.
The themes and threads that fall from the style meeting are our design foundation. We develop the scheme and select colours, fabrics, tiles and furnishings. We refer back to the style meet inspiration throughout the design, always knowing what we need to evoke to make our clients feel truly themselves in the spaces we create. It's a process we love, and one that our clients love too. It's an exciting exploration and wonderful to see.
Through the design journey their sense of 'home' is discovered.
For our client who we are sure is part-magpie. For them everything must be like a gem, a treasure to discover.
Even the door inlay details shine in this magpies nest. Their happy place was metals, jewels and all things extravagant.
IT’S DESIGN TIME
We all know a journey needs three things, a start, a middle and an end. Finding the threads and understanding our clients is the start. We've only just discovered where we are going. These threads need to be explored, we look at them and curate them into themes that weave the story into spaces.
This is our next phase of work. Immersed in our clients world, we pull on each of their threads and explore how we can develop them into rooms, spaces, overall feelings. We create a chart of their loves and hates to keep us on track. This creates an overall theme (and no we do not mean a themed room like you see on Changing Rooms!), more a feeling of where we will take their house. Then, it's design time!
We use the inspiration to guide our design selections, pulling elements of the things you love most into each of your rooms and tying them all together. If you were hugely drawn to wood perhaps we use it as a light fitting, some reclaimed shelving, exposing your roof trusses and restoring them. In love with metals? Bronzed mirrored splash backs, patinated brass hardware and inlay joinery details scatter through your spaces.
Object selection and scheme creation falls from these core loves and soon we're selecting colours, cushions, flooring, sofas, lighting and creating real life rooms. We do this with purpose, with a real understanding of you and with our design heads interpreting a feeling into a space. Magic, huh?
Our client was afraid to like anything too different, worried what people might think but loved impactful bed spaces. Our job was to encourage them to embrace what they wanted.
Our journey gave confidence to say yes to what they may have been afraid of before, knowing we could deliver on their ideal.
The discovery of your core style is a journey. You're already doing it now. You do it every day when you choose one coffee shop over another based on how it makes you feel.
Interpreting those everyday choices and the things you are drawn to is the element of magic we bring to our clients homes. Each and every one of our spaces is perfectly curated with the client who will live there at the centre of it all, it is their home.
Have a question about this process? Ask away, we love to hear from you!
Until next time,
