Outside-in design
Feeature
Interior design has popularised creating outdoor living spaces. On the flip side, it also encourages bringing the outdoors indoors, especially within rooms that open out into the garden. Beyond this is the concept of a seasonal garden house.
A garden house is when you extend the natural world into your indoor world, according to Bonnie Trust Dahan, an avid gardener and author of Garden House (Chronicle Books). It means not cutting off your interior from what’s going on in the great outdoors. It also means accommodating the different seasons.
Dahan says gardens are emotional and personal and when they become part of interior design, it becomes the perfect antidote to stressful lives.
Get in touch with your favourite flower, moss or leaf colour by taking walks in parks and gardens. Take a cutting and colour match paint for use in your bedroom or living room or use the colour as a seasonal accent colour through your accessories. “The colour resonates with you and so will make you feel alive,” Dahan says.
Be a forager. If you have your own garden, consider nothing off limits when it comes to artefacts and additions to your home. Fallen branches, dropped pods and flower clippings blend the inside environment with the outside.
“I recommend that people do a quarterly ritual,” Dahan advises. “Spend an afternoon walking through your home and thinking about the new season outdoors.”
When the weather is warm, change darker bed linens and heavier textiles for brighter and lighter fabrics. In spring, the sun moves higher and lasts longer. You can reflect the natural seasons by inviting in more light at this time of year.
Accessories are also best used in accordance with the seasons. Replace winter-evoking bare twig decorations with fresh cut spring and summer blooms. Switch cosy, warm cushions and rugs for fresh fabric cushions and grass mats. You can also extend the concept to the smallest of things, such as switching your soaps, detergents, air fresheners and perfumes to ones with fresh spring fragrances.
In winter, you want to feel cosy and may crave darkness, according to Dahan, so do the opposite changes to summer.
If your interiors are light, fresh and airy, this look can feel a little bare in the depths of winter. Interiors, like the fashion world, have to function around certain seasonal demands. Failing to accommodate the seasons can leave your interiors exposed to the cold. Think of it as wearing a tiny weenie bikini in January. Aim to create a darker, cosier interior, even if it’s only through the use of accessories. Dark and cosy feels warmer and more inviting and intimate, perfect for a night curled up on the sofa.
Bring a scent of the world inside instead of using synthetics. Try newly mowed grass in summer or bits of the forest after a rainstorm in the winter. “I’m big on natural aromatherapy,” says Dahan.
Picture caption: Natural interiors – your can use more than just pot plants to bring the garden into the home.
MyVillage 31st October
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