Picture Perfect: Making Each Of your Rooms, Simply Iconic

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Every style has something about it that makes it recognizably unique. The classic and traditional interior design styles are very similar in a lot of ways, but they each have something distinctive. The traditional style uses more dark earth tones and wood. The classic style is brighter, using neutral white and making use of more modern materials like metal. This is also true for each room, as there is always something or perhaps a few things, that make the room unique.

For the living room, it’s the sofa, coffee table, and lighting. For the kitchen, it’s the sink, countertops, island, and cupboards. As you can see, there are a few items that make a room iconic and recognizable no matter what kind of style you use. Regarding your particular style, making a room iconic could be a challenge. Some style items can overshadow the iconic pieces and thus you don’t have a center of gravity. Fear not, here are the solutions.

Contemporary living room

Contemporary styles like minimalism and postmodernism present an important challenge. They are trying to make every item more equal. A chair is just as stylish as a sofa. Coffee tables are not as important as dining tables and these types of unconventional approaches are seen more frequently. Here are a few ways you can keep your contemporary style and give iconic items the spotlight they deserve.

• The sofa – The living room is usually dominated by one item only; the sofa. However, in more recent times, contemporary styles have either removed the sofa or made it less prestigious by making it plain or unimaginative. You can draw attention to your sofa by adding a few things. Firstly you need a creative pillow, bright vibrant colors and designs. Think carefully about what each pillow says about the sofa and the initiation it sends out to guests. Leave a couple of throws on each armrest so anyone sitting down can also feel more inclined to lay back on your sofa. 
• The coffee table – Contemporary coffee tables have become very bare and not a lot can be said for the overall style. Less is more is an approach you see in many contemporary styles. You can draw attention to your coffee table by adding a small tower of coasters at one corner. You can invite people to sit their drink on the table by getting them to empty their hands or rather, making them fully. Put a small pile of magazines on the table, preferably on the same side as the coasters. You can also add a flower vase that sits in the middle and at the top of the table to make the item less of a style statement.

A welcoming bedroom

When you wake up in the morning, you want to see everything that’s around you. It’s part of our nature to scan the room and see what’s going on, even when we live alone. This is partly a security mechanism and partly a habit developed in our mind to recognize what time of the day it might be and for spatial awareness. Windows that impede natural light coming into the home can be found in Scandanavian and cottage styles. The former is because it’s very bright in the Nordic countries as snow and sunlight produce a bright white hue in every home. The latter is because it’s a home using natural materials only, thus more strength is required from the window frames. 

You can achieve a more welcoming bedroom with replacement windows in the picture style. Large rectangular frames without anything running between allows for as much light as possible to enter your bedroom when the curtains are separated. You should not leave anything in the window sills either, to not block any amount of light coming in. A naturally brighter bedroom will also mean you need to use less man-made light, which is healthier for your eyes and mood.

Dining room clutter

The dining room or area is for practical purposes in the form of eating. There shouldn’t be anything else that gets in the way. Your dining table might do well with a single flower vase in the center but nothing more should be on the table itself. This means not keeping the salt and pepper shakers on the surface. Your food should be seasoned before you sit down and not at the table itself. The dining table should never be cluttered with magazines, newspapers or even placemats.

Placemats should have their own storage space in a nearby cupboard or cabinet. They can even be stored on the underside of the table if you have a secret space. When not in use, the dining table should look elegantly simplistic. If you have a wooden dining table, it would be best to not cover the table in a cloth and instead leave it bare. Wood is a natural material and natural materials look better when they are untouched, as much as stylistically possible.

An inviting bathroom

Towels on the floor, toothbrushes on the counter and shower curtains half hanging out of the bath. This is pretty much a typical family bathroom, nothing is ever tidy. An inviting bathroom doesn’t allow any of these things to occur. Rather than keep your toothbrush and toothpaste on the surface of your sink, install a mirrored cabinet that you can use to store these items. 

Rather than have a towel rack that sticks out the wall, you should have a small pantry that you can access for towels. This can be either outside the bathroom or in a small drawer by the sink. The bottom line is, the more tidy a bathroom is, the more likely our brain will believe it to be hygienic. When you’re naked or sticking something in your mouth like a toothbrush, you want to feel assured that you’re not surrounded by bacteria. 

Making each room iconic will take time as you need to build up your understanding of how to style the items that hold the most presidency. For example, a wooden slab dining table should be kept bare, as the material is the star of the room.