Designing rooms isn’t an easy thing to do and more difficult question that buzzes in all our mind during decoration is that the room has to be decorated in combination of the colour of the room. I was recently asked to design the living room in my parent’s house, but my parents didn’t want me to put up any colours on the walls, they wanted white walls. This became a difficult situation for me but you know what, the only way to keep up with them was to put my thinking cap on!
So after lot of trial and error I finally zeroed down to the combination of simple and elegant black. Homes most importantly are not about luxury or creative designs or imaginations; I think it is most importantly about the people who live in it. It’s their emotions and feelings that truly decorate a home. So I wanted to keep the subtle and simple yet sophisticated feel of the room alive. Come to think of it, this indeed is the true philosophy that my parents have brought me up with, i.e.; simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Hence, I choose to go with the colour black for to redesign the white rooms.
I had read a quote some time back which explained that the colour black and white when they combine together, they create a magical dreamscape that can only be felt like the sunlight and is rarely seen in form. I loved this philosophy so much so I decided to use this as an inspiration for designing our living room. This is my story of designing it.
- Choosing the furniture: Since furniture and that too really old and vintage furniture were what I had to work with, so I transformed them by redesigning some of them. I could transform the sofas into modern elegant couches and I got it painted in black to accentuate the sheer style of this vintage furniture. Similarly I also converted old showcases into shelves and got them painted in similar colours, for the symmetry.
- Photo frames: Designing walls becomes the ultimate task when the walls are white. You have to be really meticulous with your work to not destroy the colour and also arrange things in a way that it looks appealing and appreciating enough. I had chosen the idea of placing all of our childhood and present photos and placed them on the wall in myriad frames and in a flower like pattern, with the photograph of my parents in the centre, so that it gives the idea that we all came from one. This wall looks absolutely gorgeous and a little asymmetry actually went ahead and helped me here.
- You may wish to do the same with photographs and arrange them in different designs up on blank white walls
- Some other exciting ideas can be to cut out jewel designs and place them up on a cardboard forming a vivid and imaginative design up on the wall.
- To add in some stimulating worth into the blank walls you may even choose to put up white coloured wallpapers with quotes written on it or some pattern drawn on it.
- Add in some brilliant sketches or artworks on black frames to add a worthy character onto the walls.
- Create a collage of myriad pencil sketches and make a sketch gallery. Embellish it with hanging planters for a complete effect.
- You can get rid of the cement sheet and bring alive the brick wall by painting it in white. This look is too much in use today and shall go a long way in designing a contemporary styled room.
- Curtains: Next after the walls my next station was my curtains. I had long drapes like dark black curtains with heavy designs and embroidery on them. So to bring it alive I chose to amalgamate it with beautiful white curtains which were designed in nets and embroidery. This just transformed the space. Some other interesting curtain ideas could be:
- Pairing it with off white colours as that shall help to brighten up the space.
- Using curtain with light colours that helps bring in the gorgeous shades of the sun all day long for myriad colours playing in the room all day long.
- Pairing curtains with ribbons to accentuate the base colours.
- Flooring: This was my last station before my journey got over. First I juggled between the options of flooring it with carpets or cover it with vinyl flooring and then I thought why not use both, so I decided to get the room floored in a black and white chess board kind of flooring. The blacks in them were not exactly jet blacks but almost like dim grey which had some designs on them. The big picture turned out to be stunning. Keeping in tone with the fabulous combination of black and white, the entire room transformed miraculously.
- If you are choosing rugs then go for black and white rugs of any patterns or really soft rugs of Dove colour to make the space look complete.
- Accessories: And finally to accessorise my room I had to put in some subtle details. Like, I changed the centre piece to a crystal bowl, embellished with gold. Here you can use white velvety roses, which are a fab combination. I changed the lamp shades to Dove coloured ones with subtle details of crystal jewels below it. You can change the cushions to hand printed ones in monotones of black or white or like the ones I used which were of big polka dots in black and white and mixed them with some red and black cushions also.
This way I eventually finished decorating our living room and was flooded with adorations. Designing homes becomes easy if you keep in mind the sentimentality of the people who are going to live there, be it you have to decorate with any colours. I hope this story from my chapters help you in any little ways and inspire you to redecorate the present room you are in, to a beautiful space. Happy designingJ