The Most Popular Interior Design Styles

In the Living Room
by Alexandra Sklar

Interior design styles have been changing over the centuries according to different tastes. This development has resulted in an abundance of various approaches towards interior design. Every decorating style has its unique characteristics as well as benefits. Many people consider redecorating their home in a certain design style, a complex and daunting task that requires spending much time and money on combining complicated themes and motifs.

However, arranging your interior in a certain design style is not as perplexing as it might seem. Interior design styles reflect themes and periods in time by working with different design ideas that they transform into modern homes. The style in which people decorate their homes always reflects their tastes and preferences. Mixing various styles is a very common feature of many homes. However, this is usually a rather intricate endeavour that can easily end in catastrophe. It’s therefore recommended to stick to a particular style. There are several highly influential decorating styles that have evolved during a longer period of time and are widely accepted. Today, we’ll focus on the most important interior design styles and movements.

Contemporary Design Style

Contemporary Design
by Maria Luisa Buccella

The most characteristic features of contemporary design style are simplicity, clean lines, and solid colours. This fresh style promotes a sense of peacefulness and simplicity.

Black, white, and other neutral colours are widely used in contemporary design. They usually create a background that is accented with brightly and boldly coloured features and accessories. The most important element of this style is a sleek line. Furniture with curved legs and other traditional features should not be mixed with simple, clean lined modern design. Pieces with smooth, clean, and geometric shapes should be used instead.

Moreover, contemporary interiors are often distinguished by leaving bare spaces on walls and other areas, making the room more simple. However, bare spaces and simple features don’t create a boring or dull look since contemporary design accentuates various textures. Accessories with textural elements are very important since they perfectly complement smooth and simple surfaces like wood, metal, and glass.

If you’re planning to arrange your home in contemporary style, you should never clutter rooms with too many pieces of furniture or accessories. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t furnish your home with modern, uniquely crafted pieces. But remember: in the case of a contemporary interior, less is more.

Traditional Design Style

Traditional Design
by SSDG Interiors

Traditional interior design emphasizes precisely crafted details and elegantly patterned fabrics. This style remains one of the most favoured mainly due to its attractive, elegant and luxurious look. It’s probably the most popular design style in America.

Traditional design modifies themes and styles from different time periods with special elements such as fresh colour or different finishes and motifs. Traditional interiors typically combine warm mid-tone colours with dark and light accents. Different intensity of hues is used to modify the level of formality. Deeper wall colours tend to create a more formal impression.

Traditional design furniture is usually made of dark wood with finely crafted designs. Shapes tend to be curvy and charming. Decorative features like moulding and chair railing add elegance and style to a traditional room. When arranging a room in the traditional style, you should be very cautious and coordinate the overall scheme, but not too excessively.

A traditional room reflects the past, therefore it’s great when you add an antique or an antique reproduction in empty spaces. On the other hand, you can also add a few contemporary styled accessories or pieces of fine contemporary art to create a modern look. Traditional design style has huge potential for incorporating a great variety of accessories.

Asian Design Style

Asian Style by Ajay Tallam

This colourful and relaxed design style gives you an opportunity to create an exotic atmosphere in your home. If you like an exotic, Asian look but don’t want to dedicate your home to a certain country, the general Asian design style is the best choice for you.

Interiors designed in Asian style have a strong accent of peace and order. Feng shui is becoming more and more popular in Western culture. These ancient Chinese guidelines for situating objects and buildings are based on the belief that all objects possess positive or negative energy. The setting of every room should therefore reflect these energies so that a perfect balance is created.

The most used materials in Asian design interiors are bamboo and wood. Pale, neutral wall colours are used to create a neutral background. However, if you want to have a Japanese influenced interior, use warm, neutral, and green, or if you lean more towards Chinese design, red and black would be more suitable.

A typical feature of an Asian design interior is a dark wooden floor, but some people prefer bamboo floors or Indian patterned rugs. It’s recommended to choose plain and simple furniture, made preferably from black or dark wood.

Asian design interiors should always include a huge number of richly patterned fabric features, such as curtains, drapes, wall-hangings, and throws. Another must are Asian-inspired accessories. The best way to accessorize your home is to bring unique pieces of art from your travels.

Arts & Crafts Design Style

William Morris Design
by Wikimedia Commons

Arts and crafts interior design style is centred around unique pieces of finely crafted furniture and interior accessories. It represents a return to well made hand crafted goods instead of mass-produced, low quality items.

Except from focusing on handmade items, arts and crafts design style prefers simple forms with little ornamentation and enjoys the beauty of natural materials. Very popular features are stylized flowers, allegories from literature, upside down hearts, and Celtic motifs. Arts and crafts style perfectly combines simplicity and functionality with quality and comfort.

Walls in an arts and crafts designed home should be painted in colours resembling autumn forest, such as deep red, burnt orange and yellow, mossy green, or chocolate brown. These colours can, together with dark wooden pieces of furniture, make your room appear darker, so sufficient lighting is required. The best materials for your lamps are wood and metal. If you are a huge fan of accessories of all kinds, be careful. Try to look for unique items that aren’t made of many materials.

Country Design Style

Country Style by Susan Serra

Country design style abandons all formalities of classic or traditional design and focuses mainly on lived-in comfort. Homes arranged in a country design style have many practical features and at the same time maintain their elegance and family atmosphere.

Country home interiors often use natural textures, colours, and many useful accessories, making them very cozy. Colours are mostly inspired by the surrounding landscape, so country homes are often centered on greens, blues, reds, white, or beige. Natural materials, such as wood, wrought iron, stone, pottery, or tin, are typical for this design style. Country design is becoming increasingly popular since there are no strict rules, leaving a huge space for expressing your personality and tastes.

Most country homes use curtains to create a more homely atmosphere and soften the windows. Antique furniture and hand crafted accessories are also very popular. Even though there’s very often a sense of history in these homes, it doesn’t mean that everything has to be rough and woodsy. You can make your home more comfortable with soft, smooth materials and create a French country design look.