We’ve only gone started a podcast! I know, how exciting right?
Within this Blog post, I thought it would be a nice idea to bring you a snippet of our discussions. And to bring it to life we mixed in a selection of our delicious design imagery.
So let's dive right in!
As we're coming towards the end of the year, what are the changes you've noticed that are happening right now in interiors?
With interiors, I feel there's a really close link with fashion. Obviously, it's no secret within the industry that interiors is probably 12 months behind fashion. So the nineties is having a huge resurgence in fashion.
Personally, it does not sit well with me. I wasn't into it the first time around and now I'm struggling, but I feel there are two things at play here. The current state of how we're all feeling, what we've been through in the last two years with Covid, with our current economic state, with the state of the world, we're all feeling like we need that kind of sanctuary in our life, that kind of safe space.
And we're also all looking for a little bit of "reverting back to fun times" when life was a lot easier and a lot less stressful. So that is translating into playful, whimsical, fun designs, in all of the fabrics that we're seeing and the interior schemes that are coming out of a lot of the high-end brands.
Are we moving away from the Kim Kardashian neutrals, which were beige on beige?
Yeah. I really do think we are. I'm seeing less and less of the urban masculine vibe, which. If you take that back to what I was saying a moment ago about the nineties, it is quite masculine actually with the DM boots and the sort of urban vibe. But I feel like we've come out of that industrial stage with the black critle doors, the kind of darker walls we've moved out of that.
But in the same vein, I think over the course of lockdown, we saw a huge trend for muted and washed out, as you said, the Kim Kardashian kind of vibe. But now I feel like that is not comforting to us anymore because it feels too bland. And I think that's what I'm finding clients are struggling with. And also the fact that it feels very un-personalized.
Do you think interiors and designs at the moment are in a transitional phase where we are not either one thing or the other?
I think this is such a multi-layered question and it's really hard to give a definitive answer because I feel there are two things going on in the industry at the moment. I feel there's a very binary sense of design, whether you are either in one camp, you're either in the Kim Kardashian, let's call it the Kim Kardashian design camp, where everything's muted and it's all about texture.
And that's what a lot of the high street brands have gone down with their, you know, bobble vases and the muted kind of vibe. And it's about ceramics, Textural pieces, rattan and that kind of vibe. Or you are in the other camp with the more industrial, darker vibes, metals, glasses, that kind of thing.
And I think unless you fall within those two, there is really not a space for you in the interiors. As a one-stop shop, I think you then have to go around, and this is what we specialize in as a design studio, which is picking elements from each of those genres, and then collating them into one beautiful space that works for what you like.
For example, you may live, well, I'm gonna use myself as an example. So we have a 1930s home. We had original, metal aluminum windows, and we've replaced those for, again, aluminum windows. The originals were critle, but for me, it felt too harsh. It felt too industrial. So I have paired that with a lot of softer fabrics. Lots of linens. But I've gone for the color and the tone in muted colors because I feel that works well with the industrial kind of vibe. That's how design should evolve.
In terms of the influences on design, it seems like we're seeing global influences. We've all seen Studio McGee on Netflix. Are these shows creating trends that are now worldwide? Do you think NetFlix is killing the creative side of interior design?
That is a great question. It's a really good starting point. I think we need to unpack that a little bit by taking a step back and looking at the Netflix phenomenon.
I think the lockdown obviously accelerated Netflix and the way we consume content. There were a lot of "where and how too" a lot of reality TV shows and they went down a treat. For example, like Studio McGee, obviously, we've all watched selling Sunset. We were immersed in that quite heavily with not a lot of other creative outlets or creative influences over the time of lockdown.
So all we saw for two years was whatever came out of Netflix. And I feel like that has influenced us because we've seen the bathrooms that Studio McGee created. We've seen the pantry that Courtney Kardashian has and we've. That is where we're getting our inspiration from. That's what we want to emulate in our own homes. But the struggle with that is, and as a design community, we've been struggling with this for many years. We don't have the same environmental impacts that they do. In America, we don't have the same environment, for example. So if we take selling sunset, so they have 365 days of sunshine. We don't have that!
The lights that they have is completely different. It's a very warm light. So when they use a lot of whites, they come up very crisp and very clean. Whereas in our country, a lot of our light is quite gray and quite heavy with blue tones. So we have to warm up our wider tones.
So for example, if you were to take. Studio McGee, living room, their style, the color, the paint, everything, and literally pick it up and put it into a farmhouse kind of design in the middle of the Surry countryside. Aesthetically, when you walk in, you would think. Visually, you would look aesthetically, you would think this looks beautiful, but the feeling would be off.
You would look and you would look out of the window and you would see cows in the distance. You'd see great big giant oak trees. You would see, um, you know, apple trees and that it doesn't work with that clean-cut the were, information with a fresh aesthetic. You can't quite put your finger on it, but it's the feeling. So what I'm saying is you can't have a binary design where you either want Studio McGee look or you want a Kim Kardashian pantry. You have to take elements of that and push that into a cohesive design by taking those elements and adding in things that you actually like. So going back to your question about global influences. I think it's because there's been a complete lack of influence from anywhere else, and I do see that being diluted.
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