Thursday 24 February 2011

Catwalk trends for interiors

Pantone's colour of the year (2011: Honeysuckle) covers fashion, interiors and packaging, which goes to suggest that fashion and interiors are closely connected. With this in mind, London Fashion Week is on at the moment and it got me thinking about how similar fashion trends are to interior trends and can you use one to spot the other?

Prints aren't new, however designers such as Louise Gray and Mary Katrantzou showed a bold new look through clashing prints. In the interior world, prints are also big - with a strong tribal influence. There are accessories in the high street shops right now, and insights into 2012 trends suggest that this is going to continue.

According to Stylesight, the "soul" trend's palette will include earthy browns and olives, contrasted with blues, yellows and reds. Clashing batik patterns with bold geometric and floral prints will liven up any living room!

Next is my personal favourite - using the analogous hues of pink, orange and red. Directly relating to Pantone's Honeysuckle which "emboldens us to face everyday troubles with verve and vigor". The idea is to brighten the mood in the light of the financial crisis.



Sass & Bide and Katie Eary embraced these clashing colours in their AW 11 collection. This bright pink is becoming increasingly visible in the high street's favourite home furnishing chains, with Habitat producing an amazing velvet pink sofa.

In contrast to these bright vibrant trends, is one based on neutral hues. This was more common than the latter two on the catwalk - Mulberry and Mark Fast being good examples.



Translated into interiors it is less bold and therefore more sustainable than the other trends. According to the Independent, IMM Cologne suggests that people are questioning what it is they need to live well; leading to the emergence of simplistic, formal or severe designs. This is a contrasting view to that of Pantone - resulting in a very different palette of warm neutrals, stone greys and blues.

Wednesday 23 February 2011

What I love most about my house....

Google is not just useful for searches, translators, images, maps, search trends, it can also act as a way to brainstorm - solus!

Being new to blogging, I thought a good place to start would be by seeing what the online world love about their house. I then put the results into a word cloud, a clever tool that increases the size of words based on the amount of times it is used, allowing you to easily pick out common themes (hours of fun!).

Bright, light, clean, quirky, colour, cozy - these terms sum up to me what I think a home should be.

The main themes show the home as a happy place for the family. I love the way people have referred to the people in the house, events and memories, not just the aesthetics.

This is a great exercise to use as a starting point for exploring possible themes for a room. I think it will be my starting point for project kitchen!