Has the COVID-19 made you make changes to your home? Are you looking for interior ideas for 2021? Then I’m hoping this blog may help you narrow down your interior choices and focus you on what is important about your Interior for you this coming year.
With nearly a complete year under COVID-19 restrictions, most of us are all living in our homes 100% of the time. Our homes now have to cater for all our needs, being work, home schooling and a relaxing space for the whole family.
It is now not so important that we have the paint colour of the year but that our homes should suit every aspect of our lives, from lighting to colour ambience, as our homes have to be more adaptable and most importantly cover all our personal “well-being” needs of style, comfort and practicality.
So, we are now in Lockdown 3, and there is a realisation that the importance of well-being is more important than ever. Our homes have had to be segmented into separated spaces to carry out different tasks, so maybe it is time for us to plan our homes to be more adaptable for 2021?
The 2021 living, sleeping spaces and gardens are now turning into “Hybrid Rooms” as they are now called. These multi-functioning spaces, created mainly from the pandemic, have forced us to merge our office, living and sleeping space into home schooling, work space and relaxing zones. Now at the start of a new year, we must be prepared to embrace and plan these adaptions more permanently as the restrictions carry on.
With 2021 paint colour charts now available and many articles on colour schemes we can see that greens, and earthy reds and beiges are a popular choice for 2021.
But colours aren’t just for looking at, it is proven that we have a physical reaction to every colour, hence how important colour psychology is for all our well-being.
In this blog I’m going to touch on a little colour psychology and how we can improve our living spaces, design of hybrid multifunctional spaces by including light, plants and colour.
1 – Colour Psychology And Choosing Room Colours That Suit You
In interior design we use a colour wheel to create balanced colour schemes, but colour isn’t all about phyiscs, a little colour psychology knowledge can help us understand how colours can make us feel.
Choosing green? Little Greene have brought out a range of historically inspired greens with association with The National Trust (see chart).
Green is the colour of nature, fruitfulness, contentment, tranquillity having ‘hope’ as the expressive value of green. This maybe why it has shown to be so popular for this year’s paint palette. (including “Treron” an olive green and “Bancha “from farrow-ball.com.
It’s also a balance colour that sits half way between warm & cool colours on the colour wheel. These colours on the interior colour palette or papers are said “to bring the outside in”. Olive greens work well with greys it may be a good transition this year in your home if its been painted in 2020 greys!
Choosing Red? Red is a strong and exciting colour, it is about willpower, vitality and human warmth signifying richness and luxury. Choose from Farrow & Ball shades like Preference Red or Brinjal or softer tones of Crimson Red. Graham & Browns paint Colour of the year “Epoch” and their wallpaper of the year is Timepiece Amethyst wallpaper mixing deep tones and various archive papers creating this one in a geometric design.
Choosing blue? Known as the colour of peace, contented, calm and serene. Choose from Stiffkey Blue or Pitch blue by Farrow & Ball.
Love them or hate them, the 2021 Pantone Colours of the year are PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray & PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating yellow. With Yellow being one of the most light giving hues, making you feel stimulated, joyful and radiant! it works well hand in hand with a neutral grey, and if like me you have already some grey in your home the yellow can work as a perfect “pick you up” accent in small amounts.
Earthy warm tones are In! Dulux has released its colour of the year being “Brave Ground”. Does it look like “mud” to you or comforting and grounding? These colours are said to tie you strongly to nature. The paint experts at Dulux say they have identified the warm and grounding neutral shade as “the colour that will enable people to draw upon the strength of nature to help them find the courage to embrace the future and give you strength to embrace”.
Similar colours are Brown Bunny from Valspar available at B & Q.
2 – The Global, Escape & Getaway Trend
A natural trend taking influence from nature using calmer colours from the colour palette, brought in from all those inspiring missed holiday destinations from 2020. We all miss that escapism that normally drives us through the year.
In 2021 wallpapers and interiors embrace this making it easier to make rooms in our home “our safe place”.
Choose a feature wall of your favourite destination, view or memory. We can also embrace escapism with scented candles that take our thoughts and memories to another place.
3 – Hybrid Spaces And Multifunctional Rooms
Through 2020, we experienced the need to live, work and play in the same space. This caused an increase in desire for multi functionable rooms, This could mean the use of flexible modular pieces of storage or furniture to make your home more adaptable.
More examples of this style could be interior screens to separate areas, fold up desks and beds all making it easier to balance the life of the ‘New Normal”.
We now need to have studies and workspaces where there isn’t too much background noise and a way of hiding work away at the end of the day.
When designing your work area take time to make sure it has everything needed to make you feel comfortable. This space should be practical for the task, enough lighting, not too noisy or busy, possibly an inspiring window view to boost your creativity and productivity in front of your desk rather than looking at a wall. To help split up relax and work areas, room dividers can work very well. Our homes should inspire us.
4 – Wall Finishes
An easy way to create a feature wall, try experimenting with different paint finishes from matt to gloss on one wall to create an impressive wall finish and use different finishes of the same colour on the ceiling and woodwork.
Our rooms should be cosy and cocoon us, with colours this year being warmer and more natural with a shift away from the greys which were all so popular.
Consider adding some panelling to give a room texture, if you don’t want the upheaval of wood or MDF then wallpaper is an easy, effect equivalent.
Panelling papers available from the company I Love Wallpaper. If light is an issue then large mirrors are ideal to “borrow” light from a window.
5 – Garden Interiors and Outside Rooms
Alex at @alexcrabtreepr
With spending so much time at home in 2020, now is the time to plan your garden rooms that bring the outside in for 2021 (just in case we have to stay at home again!) With our outside spaces suddenly becoming our “all round living spaces” this trend is there because gardens are so good for our mental health and we are much needed throughout the lockdown last year.
Popularity of hot tubs, outside kitchens and summer houses all with weather proof fabrics and lighting to create another essential room to spend relaxing family time in. If you haven’t got much garden space then it’s important to bringing light and greenery into your interior, mirrors, light lanterns, light tunnels and plants creating a calm green space. With fabrics choose textures and layers and a similar colour palette to your interior so the spaces flow into each other.
6 – Sustainability and Vintage
Recycling and Reusing has got to be one of the hottest new trends and obviously one very close to my heart.
At Revamp Boutique we try to reuse and upcycle as much as possible taking pieces that would have been heading to landfill and reviving them. This style of interiors is growing fast and we are proud to be part of it.
With plastic use now going out of control partly to do with the pandemic and landfill not an endless possibility, there has got to be environmental balance it.
With this arising awareness and social consciousness about the ecological problems threatening our planet influence the industry to produce reusable environment options accordingly. Thank goodness!
7 – Cottage Core Style and Arts & Crafts Revival
This style has been born throughout lockdown from March 2020 to January 2021. In difficult times we naturally crave our creature comforts, nesting colours and textures.
In 2020 there was a need to shop locally due to the fact that no one could travel too far under restrictions, There was also a huge appreciation for simple homely design resulting from a self-sufficient life of 2020.
People also choosing handcrafted pieces from small local firms or directly from the producer for sustainability to support local small businesses. With simple things of life like setting the table, attending to our plants, sitting in front of the fire and enjoying our handmade items possibly made as a lockdown craft, Cottage Core was born! Furniture full of history and character, possibly curved, practical and easy on the eye.
Find My Pinterest Boards
To partner this blog, I’ve made a creative board on Pinterest split into all the same titles to give you more visual inspiration.
Workshops
Want to get creative? I am running a number of workshops in 2021 with limited spaces left.
You find more information about my Fabric Decoupage, Paper Decoupage and Paper Mache workshops.