Interior Design Secrets

The young urban educated men and women today want nothing to do with their parents’ furniture, works of art, accessories or tableware. They don’t like florals, frills, bows or anything which screams the 70s and 80. They like clean, straight lines solids and abstracts, geometric shapes and sophisticated workmanship with minimum fuss. In other words, they like contemporary interior design.

Contemporary interior design is what you think of when you see sleek black leather sofas, stainless steel kitchen appliances, huge framed pieces of art in monochromatic tones and new fabrics like suede and micro fiber. Contemporary interior design is not what you see in country cottage flair, plaids and prints, flowers, polka dots, huge arrangements and cutesy frills and bows.

Kitchen, Bedroom and Beyond

Beyond the living room, contemporary interior design would include glass top tables with straight legs and straight back chairs as opposed to carved wooden furniture and shapely legs. In the kitchen, you are looking at high cabinets with granite top counters, refrigerator flush with the cabinets and a kitchen island complete with tall bar stools and geometric designed or solid dinner ware.

In the bedroom, if it is going to be a four poster bed, it will have straight clean lines also and be made of wrought iron or metal as opposed to wood. Even though wood does feature in contemporary interior design, it is of a very different style than in classic or traditional style furniture.

Rugs will also be in deep shades of color with few flowers and more shapes and textures.

Accessories will be just greenery in an odd shaped urn as opposed to pink and red roses in a classic shaped vase. Frames on the mantle place will have straight edges, perhaps embellishments with gems and stones instead of curvy leaves and flowers. Storage will be paramount and many pieces will be multifunctional. An ottoman will serve s a footrest, extra seating, side table (or coffee table if its large enough) and some may even flip open for storage and have a tray on the other side.

Kids beds will have extra storage drawers underneath or be a trundle bed or a loft style bunk with sleeping quarter’s upstairs ad a desk, sitting area below. Fluffy cushions will be kept to a minimum – a few toss pillows in coordinated accents will add a splash of color here and there.

Light fixtures will not look like they were time warped from the 70s. They will not be shiny gold or silver; rather dull finished chrome or bronze will more likely coordinate with the contemporary interior design theme rather than something that hurts the eye.