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Interior Design Basics:
- Homepage
- Interior Design Basics
- The Basics of Color
- Wall Treatments
- Fabrics
- Furniture
- Window Treatments
- Flooring Treatments
- Securing Your Home
- Green Home Basics
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Recommended Advanced Reading:
- Easy Home Decorating
- DIY Handyman Guide
- Drywall Installation
- Kitchen Design
- Bathroom Design
- Home Theater Design
- Furniture Selection
- Feng Shui Better Living
- Guide to Home Security
- Big $ Fixing Up Houses
- Build New Home Save $
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Choosing Furniture in Interior Design
When it comes to choosing furniture for your interior design there are a few points to consider.
- Is the piece suitable in function and cost?
- Is it suitable in mood and style? Does it have the right look?
- Is it suitable in quality? Is it of similar quality to the other furniture pieces?
- Does the piece have suitable proportions? Are the different parts in pleasing harmony with each other?
- Is the piece the right scale? Is it harmonious with the size of the objects and space around it?
- Are the fabrics appropriate? Bright, intense colors and bold patterns increase visual weight. Muted, neutral tones and solid colors reduce visual weight.
- To develop a good eye for quality furniture, look at examples at museums, in fine art books and in the better design magazines. Immerse yourself in these design publications and in a short while you will develop a feel for quality.
Arranging Furniture
When it comes to arranging furniture follow these guidelines:
- The shape of the sides of the piece of furniture should be harmonious with the shape of the wall. Don't put round tables in the corner of rooms.
- Avoid placing rectangular furniture at an angle to straight walls.
- If the space on the wall is rectangular, a rectangular shaped piece of furniture will look best there. An oval shaped piece of furniture may suffice. Be careful, if the furniture is to be placed flush up against the wall, it looks much better with straight edges and perpendicular corners. With rounded corners it can work if the furniture is to be placed away from the wall. I think it's best to stick with straight furniture unless you are placing an oval table or something in the middle of the room.
- If the space on the wall is square, a square shaped piece of furniture will look best there. You might also get away with a round piece of furniture.
- Rectangular or oval shaped dining tables look best in rectangular dining rooms and square or round dining tables are appropriate for square spaces.
- Vary the heights of the major pieces in the room.
- Spread your colors throughout the room.
- Start your arranging by centering the major piece of furniture on the rooms' balance line (which is found on the mid line of each wall), then add the next most important pieces. Keep re-arranging until the furniture looks visually balanced on each side of the balance line. It's right when it FEELS right. Don't over think it.
- Remember to keep the visual weight of furniture balanced amongst the 4 quadrants of the room as you learned how to do in Interior Design Basics. Also, make sure the focus of the room has visual balance with it's opposite wall.
- When balancing furniture in interior design you can use formal balance (where the furniture exactly mirrors itself on each side of the balance lines), or informal balance where the "visual" weight of the furniture is equal on each side of the balance lines.
Furniture Styles
Here are a selection of some of the major furniture styles from throughout history and how to spot them.
Mediterranean style
This is the earliest style of furniture still in common use today. It includes Italian Renaissance furniture (from the 1400's) and Spanish furniture (from the 1500's and their colonizing days), which is why it is also common in Latin America. Both the Italian and Spanish styles work well together in the same interior design.
This is heavy furniture. There is nothing delicate about it. It is solid, squarish and built to last. It is usually made of ornately carved wood.
The Spanish Mediterranean furniture often featured leather that was decorated with metal nail heads which is a legacy of Moorish influence.
French styles
- Louis XIV style (1643 – 1715) has massive scale, chairs had X shaped stretchers supporting the legs, with a basically square form and an upholstered seat and back. Tables also had the X shaped stretchers which were needed to support their massive scale. This style had detailed ornamentation and is often referred to as Baroque furniture. From this time, gold plated bronze ornamentation called Ormolu was also commonly used on French furniture.
- Regence style (1700 – 1730) was a transitional style between Louis XIV and Louis XV. Furniture had many similarities with Louis XIV furniture but with the introduction of cabriole legs (curved legs meant to suggest an animals leg) and a vertical, free form curvature on the top edge of seat backs.
- Louis XV style (1730 – 1775) had curved shapes and forms inspired by nature. Extensive rococo decoration (elaborate decoration incorporating a shell motif), romantic and Chinese inspired imagery, delicate shape and design and no leg stretchers are the key features of this style.
- Louis XVI (1775 – 1789) furniture was inspired by classical design generated in a large part by the discovery of Pompeii and the wide spread public interest this caused. This style had straight slim legs (usually fluted and topped with a box shape containing a carved rosette), rectangular shapes or mechanically produced curves (as opposed to the free form curves from the previous style), classical motifs (such as columns, urns and lyres) and delicate construction. This style was not ornately carved nor painted. This style was also called the Neo-Classical style.
- Directoire style (1790 – 1804) was influenced by the guillotine. Furniture makers were terrified of being seen as showing sympathy for the old regime and so they rejected the old style of furniture design to save their heads. This new style had simple elegant lines, patriotic revolutionary motifs (including military motifs, agricultural motifs and crossed flags), classical motifs (inspired by ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece), curled chair backs and scrolled sofa arms as well as outward curving legs or classic fat straight legs. The lyre backed chair is a classic design from this period.
- Empire style (1804 – 1831) was developed during the time of Napoleon. It had a heavy masculine look, polished veneers more often than carved wood surfaces, excessive use of ormolu mounts (often large and badly cast), chairs with wooden backs and upholstered seats, furniture inspired by classical Greece (including the boat bed, Recamier day bed and tripod stand), mirrored back console tables and motifs inspired by ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece as well as patriotic and military motifs. In short, it looked terrible. Napoleon saw himself as an emperor and so the style of furniture from this period was inspired by the other great Mediterranean empires from the past. Eventually the Industrial Revolution and the design demands of mass production saved us from this style and instead gave us global warming. It was worth it.
English styles
- The early English styles referred to as either Tudor or Jacobean from the end of the 16th century and through most of the 17th century were heavily influenced by and were almost identical to the Mediterranean style you read about earlier.
- William and Mary style (1689 – 1702) was the first revolution in English furniture style. This style had hooded tops (tops in the shape of single or double round arches that look like Dutch roofs), curved X shaped stretchers and inverted cups on straight turned legs. Besides these features they had basically straight lines.
- Queen Anne style (1702 – 1714) designs were comfortable and affordable, yet elegant. This style had cabriole legs often with shell motif on the knee, fiddle back splats on the chairs and basically curved lines. The furniture was often finished with a glossy lacquer which was an idea borrowed from Oriental furniture. This is also the era when tea became popular and so the tea table was created.
- Early Georgian style (1714 – 1760) was the same as the Queen Anne style but with extensive addition of carving, particularly eagles, lions, satyrs and cabochons. This carving was made possible by the introduction of mahogany. Up to this point most furniture was made out of oak and walnut.
- Late Georgian styles (1760 – 1811) were a collection of styles. In this era individual cabinetmakers developed their own styles. Some of these were:
Chippendale – He tried many different things so it is hard to pin down his style, but look for rococo motifs with open carved backs, Chinese motifs, Gothic motifs and curved open pediment tops.
Adam Brothers – Had straight legs that were often fluted but with no boxed rosette like you would find with the Louis XVI style. Also look for oval shaped chair backs with spokes, lyres or other classical motifs like vases and urns.
Hepplewhite – Had curved chair backs (featuring shield, interlacing heart and oval), straight legs (but with no fluting like in the Adam style), spade foot and serpentine front on case pieces.Sheraton – The apostle of the straight line. Straight legs (no fluting but frequently reeded), lightness and elegance.
- Regency style (1810 – 1837) was similar to (basically a rip off of) French Empire style but it sometimes used different symbols.
- Victorian style (1837 – 1901) was an attempt by the nouveau rich to emulate the luxury of an earlier time. The designs of this era were affected by the Industrial Revolution and were limited to what the machines of the day could produce. It was a materialistic and ostentatious mess heavily influenced by Gothic and Rococo imagery.
To design a Victorian room, you ignore all the rules of good design you have learned on this website, clutter the room with as much stuff as possible and cover the walls with the worst looking wallpaper you can find. This style ultimately became a caricature of itself. Don't let this happen to your interior designs.
Early American styles
The rich were influenced by the English Georgian styles and to a lesser extent the French styles. They called their styles the Federal and the American Empire. The rest of the poorer folk developed their own style.
The most famous cabinetmaker of the American Empire style was Duncan Phyfe. There is a display room of his works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He was heavily influenced by the French Empire style.
In the time before the Civil War, American furniture styles were strongly influenced by the Greek Revival style. After the war, the design of the day was influenced by the Victorian era. A famous designer from after the war was John Henry Belter. Belter patented a method of making intricate machine produced laminated furniture. He also has a display room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Let's look at the style of the poorer folk as it was more distinctive to Colonial America. The lines of this furniture style are very simple. The workmanship is unrefined and rustic. It is small in size, has a square frame structure, is usually painted and typically has square shaped legs with simple decorative turnings.
Some chairs from this era were:
- Slat back chairs (which had horizontal slats, straw rush seats and lathe turned legs),
- Bannister backed chairs (same as the slat backed variety but with vertical banister like poles on the backrest),
- Fiddle back chairs (same again but with a single vertical fiddle shaped splat in the backrest, rounded back posts and possibly cabriole legs),
- Windsor chairs (with spindle backs set into the wooden seat and splayed legs), and
- Shaker chairs (which look like slat back chairs but have no decorative turnings and incorporate finials {knobs} onto the tops of the uprights).
Tables of this era included:
- Farm tables (a simple table with four straight legs and an apron for support connecting the tops of the four legs to each other and the table top),
- Trestle tables (legs at each end of the table form an X and a stretcher runs the length of the table connecting the legs at each end through the middle of the X),
- Tavern tables (four legs, apron at the top and stretchers connecting the legs near the base), and
- Drop leaf tables (sections of the table top hinge up to seat more guests or hinge down to save space, besides that they look a lot like tavern tables).
Beds of this era were often high or low four posters (with or without canopies) and this was also the era when the trundle bed was invented. Trundle beds are low beds that roll under the main bed. Large storage boxes called case pieces were often kept at the foot of the bed. Case pieces can also refer to any size storage furniture. Another common term used is credenza.
20th Century styles
The furniture of these styles are often produced out of formed wood, metal, glass and plastics. We see these styles all around us. The 20th Century has seen two main opposing schools of thought; Ornamentalism and Functionalism. Four major styles were and are:
- Art Nouveau – attempted to reject the machine age with carved wood and lines imitating nature with convoluted curves and shapes. An example of this are Tiffany lamps.
- Art Deco – glorified ornamentation. This was heavily influenced by the cubist movement of the day. It had geometric forms and shapes.
- Bauhaus – was founded by Walter Gropius and embraced the machine age. It rejects all ornamentation and elevates function as its ideal. This is a very minimalist style.
- Post Modernism – is more of an architectural style really but makes its presence felt in furniture design as well. Basically this is what is being produced today and it takes many different forms being explored by many different designers. Many designers are combining ornamentation and functional elements into their styles today. Who knows what the future will bring.
There are many great magazines available today on modern furniture design. You should check them out.
Now that we have furniture options all sorted out, what should we do about window treatments?
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