What is style and what is it for

Style is what transforms a simple room with furniture into a living space and perks it up. Everyone remembers the identical apartments in Soviet-era prefabricated buildings with the same design and identical furniture. Now, style is something quite the opposite. Something that stands out from the homogeneous mass and highlights individuality. Moreover, the style shows taste, values, and attitude to life. Kitchens in the style of Provence, minimalism, and loft style tell about their owners in very different ways. In other words, design style is a way to reflect a person's inner world in the space they live in. For what purpose? To make the stay in this space as comfortable as possible.

Nowadays, designers list about a hundred styles. Scandinavian, minimalism, loft, eclectic, contemporary, art-deco, fusion, high-tech, pop art, eco, futurism, avant-garde, kitsch, steampunk, boho, industrial, and so on. But this should not worry you. After all, the main design rule for any modern interior is "No rigid framework and immutable rules”. There are even special styles based on an intentional mixing of different styles. For example, eclectic, fusion, or art-deco. And there are also styles that show a deliberate "lack" of style, such as boho (which stands for glamorous gypsy) or kitsch.

Despite the fact that the rules of modern design are becoming more and more conventional, the principles are quite clear and run like a thread through each style. It is worth taking them to heart when developing a concept of interior design.

5 Principles of Modern Design

You can combine anything, but you have to do it competently. There has to be an underlying idea and a pattern in any combination. It should not be a pure chaos. So for example, if you consider a typical Victorian bedroom and repaint it crimson, you get a great example of fusion décor. You get both a proper sense of style and a distinct protest against restrictions.

You shouldn’t be guided by fashion, but by your own needs. Any modern interior seeks to be as organic as possible. In order to achieve this, many factors must be taken into account at the same time: the owner's taste, their occupation, marital status, the peculiarities of the room, the surrounding landscape, etc. Therefore, even two similar rooms, decorated in the same style, won't be identical.

Comfort is above all. This means that when choosing between convenience and artistic value and beauty, one should opt for the first parameter. A person should feel as natural as possible in their habitat. This can lead to seeming contradictions.Let's take as an example the case when a person feels comfortable working in a home office, where there is nothing superfluous, and everything is as functional, modern, and upscale as possible. It can be a minimalist or loft-like office space. But maybe the same person isn't comfortable sleeping in such a room. Then it would be reasonable to decorate the bedroom in a soft and cozy Scandinavian style. Following the same logic, the dining room can be designed in a modern style or with its elements. All this will not look discordant if competently combine all three rooms into one based on a similar color palette, put the same flooring all around, or use 1-2 identical techniques in each of the rooms.

Maximum of space and air. Everything superfluous gets removed from the interior as non-functional. The overall harmony is based on ergonomics and natural shapes. Minimalism is the ultimate expression of this paradigm. The idea is embodied through innovative technical solutions, which allow you to hide all the insides - devices, communications, wiring, tools, and so on. We put all this stuff in built-in cabinets, under suspended ceilings, and in secret niches. This approach also involves smart appliances, transformer furniture, etc.

Minimalism of shapes and color palette. This principle naturally comes from the previous ones. The space shouldn't be cluttered. Lines gravitating towards the natural ones are supposed to be as plain and simple as possible. Circle, square, rectangle, wave. The color palette consists of 3-4 colors, muted, often pastel tones. None of the objects in the interior should take up too much attention. All this is just a background, a backdrop, a stage where a person "plays". Although, if you think, for example, about pop-art or kitsch, then everything goes the other way around. The more diverse details, bright colors, and stylistic techniques you combine, the better you convey the main idea - complete freedom of self-expression and no limits. However, even in this case, it is worth adhering to a sense of proportion. Otherwise, there is a risk that the room will turn into a museum warehouse or a panopticon.

How to choose the right design for your house or apartment

To choose the right design for yourself, you should not blindly copy fashionable replicated samples. First of all, you need to take into account your own needs. You need to understand what you really want, and what is better to avoid. For some people, the most comfortable is a hard loft, for others a cozy Provence or a warm Mediterranean style.

To create the right atmosphere is necessary to feel the person, feel the room and understand its purpose. This is the main objective of a designer - to feel the connection between all these inputs, and to be able to implement it by available means. 

If we are dealing with the space of a medical center, there should be plenty of fresh air, a minimum of color contrasts, and maximum comfort. There has to be an atmosphere of trust. 

But in a restaurant with Asian cuisine, all sorts of contrasts will be appropriate and even desirable. Bright colors, lots of light, colorful random spots. All the above help to create an atmosphere of celebration, romance, and a family feast.

If you want to find out if a particular designer is capable of the task you want them to do, just look at their portfolio. Take a closer look, at how their work corresponds to your vision and how it suits your ideas. And if you think it does, just trust the master.

TheTceh Design Studio has mastered and professionally implements all of the listed principles. Each of our projects is a work of art. Each apartment, each house, decorated by us, becomes the ideal place for living owners. Each restaurant or office as accurately as possible reflects the philosophy of the venue. Please see the restaurants in Kyiv or Lviv, where we had the honor to work, cafes in Kharkiv or Ivano-Frankivsk. Look at the photos of apartment designs in Dnipro, Poltava, or Odesa, which we were involved in decorating, and see for yourself. We went almost all over Ukraine and we are not going to rest. We succeed in this because we have another "secret" principle, and no project can do without it: humans are always at the center of the universe they are building.

We create distinctive, functional, and esthetic interiors that reflect the personality and taste of our clients and establish new quality of life.