Italian style gallery
Minimalism
Italian homes today tend to have a simple, clean and uncomplicated atmosphere, unlike their ancestors who liked to decorate their homes with lots of ornaments and figurines. In many Italian homes, some items often have more than one function to make the room more efficient, such as a sofa bed. Each piece of furniture should justify its usefulness.
Clever lighting
There is no single, perfect principle of lighting in Italian interiors. Rather, the lighting method is adapted to a specific interior. If you live in the city, a large and sparkling chandelier will be a great way to emphasize the height of the apartment. However, you will get a delicate and diffused light by using a few floor and table lamps.
Using natural materials
The Italian style is famous for this. Italians have perfected the skill of combining wood, stone, metal and glass. Therefore, in the Italian style interior finishing, we can easily find beautiful mosaics on the floor, impressive marble table tops, metal and wooden accents in furniture, as well as many glass products: decorative mirrors and glazing.
Important little things
Classic Italian style wouldn’t be complete without well-chosen, colorful accessories. The kitchen can be made up by, for example, wicker vases with fruit or decorative bottles for spices and oils. It is worthwhile to decorate the living room with a painting in an antique frame and small, glass statuettes from Venetian Murano. Bright pillows can be placed on the sofa, and the windows can be covered with a curtain in a heavy color scheme.
Kitchen
The Italian style is ideal for decorating the kitchen, where natural materials for finishing walls and floors, mainly made of stone and wood, matter most. Kitchen furniture should be made of natural wood and painted in a light or dark colour. They are often styled in an antique look. Combinations of different types of wood and patterns can effectively fill a kitchen space.
Bedroom made in Italy
It can be recognized by the specific arrangement of the furniture: the beds are placed in the center of the room, sometimes diagonally. Next to the bed, there is a carved or wrought bookcase with a bedside lamp, a neat dressing table at the front, and cupboards and chests of drawers along the walls. Everything in subdued pastels, with the addition of bright colours. A wooden floor, of course, often with a small woolen rug.
Living room
A classic Italian-style living room has bright walls and high ceilings, possibly decorated with stucco. Lighting in the form of chandeliers, wall lamps, floor and table lamps. Soft sofas with textile upholstery and armchairs for seating. Obligatory expensive curtains on the windows, a shiny floor, a fireplace and decorative elements: vases, figurines, large potted plants.
Bathroom
Usually it is finished in light and warm colours. Walls and floors, as a rule, are tiled, and the ideal option for the ceiling is a painting. Italians do not like bright light, so wall lamps with textile lampshades placed on both sides of a large mirror are preferable. The bathtub is usually the focal point of the room. You can install a white or gray blind on the windows.
DETAILS
The Italian style in the interiors (many designers believe that this is the main concept that influenced the Mediterranean style) absorbs, first of all, the warm, sunny shades of the Apennine peninsula and naturally blends with the fervent mentality of its inhabitants. The refined restraint and tradition of the Italian interior evoke a sense of peace, coziness and pleasant home comfort, so important in the modern world. Bright, neutral shades, natural materials and various accessories – this is not all that the classic interior of the motherland of olive oil delights connoisseurs. So what are the hallmarks of the Italian style of interior design? Mediterranean surroundings, warm sunny climate, rich nature definitely deserve attention here, because they have significantly influenced the form and content of the Italian interior design style.
Contemporary experiments in interior design have had little influence on the traditional Italian style. But new materials, the choice of any range of colours and furniture, made it possible to implement the most unusual ideas in this direction, bringing new means of expression to the Italian classics. When creating an interior in the Italian style, designers must take into consideration its distinctive features:
Natural wood furniture.
The most commonly used species are oak or pine, varnished of course. Antique furniture is quite familiar to Italian style – old, richly decorated sets with expensive and elegant upholstery will always suit a luxurious Italian living room. However, the most important thing is comfort, so when finishing Italian-style interiors, do not forget about a comfortable sofa, couch and armchairs, richly decorated. The furniture is supposed to give a sense of comfort, luxury and rest.
Decorations on the walls
Simply covering of walls with, for example, wallpapers or photo wallpapers is something which practically cannot be possible to see in Italian interiors. The walls are decorated primarily with magnificent Venetian plaster, mosaics or murals. Very often, such finishing are developed individually for each interior and created by hand, which ensures their highest effectiveness – the renovation is strictly supervised by the designer to keep all the details alive.
Organization of space
The characteristic features of the Italian style finishing are arches instead of the typical door openings. The integrity of the room is achieved by using a floor that is consistent in the same style – it is smart to consult with the designer to choose the perfect and harmonious “floor-wall” pair. Remember, that interior finishing in the Italian style must be characterized by order, symmetry, balance and restraint.
Warm colours
The Italian style of turnkey finishing is primarily based on the use of shades of beige, yellow, orange and pale pink, and the walls are most often painted in dirty white or snow-white colours. Italians are very clever to brighten up a room by “highlighting” several leading colours with a lighter shade. This gives the illusion of additional sun exposure to the place. Remember that the Italian style uses a light shade of colours, appropriate to the Mediterranean climate. It must be warm and sunny.
To summerize, the Italian interior design gives you complete freedom in terms of accessories: luxurious soft furniture can coexist with charming knitted napkins and an old chandelier with a simple floral veil. When creating an Italian-style apartment or house, you should think carefully about every detail, so that your home becomes a really cozy place, reminding of warm, sunny Italy.