With autumn and winter fast approaching and the darker nights shortening our days, keeping the spirit of summer alive in your home using clever interior design choices can help ease the most difficult seasonal transition.
From key colour shades to subtle design additions, my advice will ensure your home remains a reminder of summer while not looking out of place as we transition into the colder months.
How can you make your home look and feel more exotic?
Textures and shapes
Texture is perhaps the most overlooked yet powerful tool in interior design, since it can quickly transform a home with character and unite a design scheme together. If you’re longing for past holidays in the Mediterranean, add natural materials to your existing interior. Incorporating rattan baskets, accessories made from seagrass, or a side table or armchair with an element of rattan or cane, will immediately create a relaxed boho ambiance that remains warm and inviting even in the colder months.
Pebbles from the beach and assorted warm metals and metallics, in the form of frames or mirrors, work beautifully with these natural materials and provide a contrast in texture that will make your room even more inviting.
For a cost-effective way to keep the summer vibes going, add ceramics to your existing interior. Ceramic artisan vases offer a quick way to introduce fluidity, reminiscent of waves and the coastline, into your design scheme, since they come in an array of abstract shapes and sizes. Glazed ceramics, which often adopt organic shapes and are hand painted also serve as an easy way to counterbalance the clean lines and geometric silhouettes of some modern furniture and can often be purchased locally from an independent seller on your travels.
These small additions which favor a fluid look will introduce a playful and fun element to your interior, serving as a reminder of summer, while providing visual focal points when strategically placed next to unforgiving angular lines.
Home Wall art
Nothing serves as a better visual reminder of your favourite holiday or summer’s day out than a photograph or print. Creating a gallery wall or hanging statement pieces of artwork featuring your favourite summer throwbacks to an otherwise blank space is the perfect way to instantly add character and create a focal point to an area that would otherwise be neglected.
Whether it be a photo taken from a dreamy destination you’ve visited, an abstract print of a foreign landmark you long to travel to, or simply a family photo showcasing a happy summer’s picnic, artwork is always guaranteed to start a conversation – which is perfect when entertaining guests.
To take this further, create a gallery wall which includes other reminders of summers gone by, such as tapestries purchased from foreign holidays, or items collected from the beach resting on small shelves. Adding these pieces alongside paintings and prints will create a focal point bursting with personality that is rich in texture, sizes and most importantly, summer memories.
Bringing the outdoors in interior design
As the colder weather forces us to spend more time inside, creating a seamless transition between your garden and home through subtle design choices, is a relaxed and cost-effective way to ensure those evenings spent on the patio don’t become a forgotten memory. This indoor-outdoor living is a key part of foreign culture where the warmer weather is guaranteed. Although our weather can be unpredictable, clever, cost-effective design choices can create the illusion of this seamless transition.
To truly bring the outdoors in, look to your garden’s colour palette for inspiration. Identifying key pops of colour in your garden and integrating these internally through houseplants, ceramic pots or soft furnishings, such as cushion covers or curtains and blinds, can create a seamless transition between the spaces – particularly if your furnishings embrace a nature inspired print – one of my favourites is a watercolour effect floral print which is a super contemporary take on this trend.
Patterns inspired by nature can also be recreated in unexpected and contemporary materials, like foliage prints in plaster or staining concrete to create marbled effects. At Redrow, we often demonstrate stunning ceramic floor tiles in our show homes which are created to replicate natural wood planks with a textured grain. Using materials which recreate a look provides a visual connection to the beauty of nature and being outdoors, while being hardwearing for the home – ideal for muddy boots after autumn walks.
Although small, these subtle design additions will help create a mirage of being back outside in your garden and among nature – perfect for those rainy autumnal days.
How to give your home a fresh summer look?
Decorating with a summer colour palette is all about bringing the look and feel of sunny evenings, warm beaches and foreign holidays into your interior design – but as we head into winter, making sure your home retains its summer spirit, while remaining on trend for autumn and winter is essential.
It's important to remember that popular, bold summer colours, such as rich yellows and deep blues, work just as well in the colder months, but often require a more muted colour palette that’s toned down for the colder seasons.
Cornforth blue
Regardless of the season, blue remains a popular choice throughout the home since it brings with it a natural touch of serenity and calmness, reminiscent of the sea and clear skies. Lighter tones of blue in particular, can instantly make us feel calm, centred and content, making it an ideal choice for bedrooms or bathrooms.
Cornforth blue in particular provides a soothing backdrop, making it an ideal option for bedrooms where creating a tranquil sanctuary for a good night’s sleep should be the rooms’ main design objective. To add a touch of the famous Cornish style, incorporate a delicate nautical stripe either through textured wallpaper on a featured wall, on bed linen or soft furnishings, will introduce that all-important coastal feeling.
Jade green
If you’re looking to redecorate for the new season, earthy tones, such as sage greens, peaches and warm caramel offer the perfect balance between retaining summer’s warmth while transitioning into autumn’s cosiness. These softer colours are more muted in tone making them reminiscent of Mediterranean interiors and offer an adaptable base colour where richer tones can be easily introduced as winter approaches.
Alysha Alli, who heads up Redrow’s in-house interior design team, has over nine years’ industry experience working in the field of interior design. With a well-trained eye for perfectly crafted internal layouts, quality, craftsmanship, textiles and furnishings, Alysha continues to be recognised for her timeless style and designs that remain ahead of trend.
Looking for more interior design ideas for your new home, check out Japandi interiors trend and how to get the look.
