Interior Design Q&A: minimalist midcentury maximalism

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Interior Design Q&A: minimalist midcentury maximalism

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Welcome to the new Interior Design Q&A thread! To try to provide space for both people who want to laugh at bad design and gawk at fancy interiors and people who want to know if the credenza they found at the antique store matches their house we're splitting the threads.

If you're looking for the zillow search of the day, mcmansion hell conversation, or other interior design casual chat please see Youth Decay's new thread: Interior Design Chat Thread: WTF HGTV

Because this thread is going to be a bit more serious, please be kind to your fellow goons. If you don't like a particular school of design you don't need to shout that at everyone who comes in asking for help with it. Similarly, if someone's asking for help with their hollywood regency interior, please don't tell them they should replace it with contemporary minimalism because that's what you prefer.

Or in short, if someone comes in asking for help, your options are:
1) help
2) don't post

And now, the relevant parts of the old thread OP:

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Who/what are you designing for?
Are you designing for you by yourself, you and your family, or your imagined future home buyers? Most people will tell you that trying to predict the tastes of your future buyers is a big financial risk, especially if you don't expect to sell for several years. Be cautious installing expensive, trendy materials. The HGTVs and Pinterests of the world told everyone to install granite countertops ten years ago, and now home shoppers look at that and go "well we'll have to rip that out right away."

"That's just my taste"
Differing tastes are great! Some people like warm, eclectic spaces with lots of handcrafted details, some people want to live in swedish teak spaceships (yo). The conversation to have in this thread is whether what you think you want is actually what you want, and whether you're taking the right steps to achieve it. The OP of the Bathroom Overhaul thread wanted a "luxury Vegas hotel bathroom," which makes my insides shudder, but it's still something that can be done well if attention is paid to fundamental design theories like color, line, and balance, as well as practicalities about how the space will be used, and how to renovate without killing everyone who sets foot in your home (surprisingly tricky!)

How to Adapt Your Inspiration
One of the big mistakes people make when taking design inspiration from commercial spaces (hotels, restaurants), design publications, or show homes, is that a normal person's everyday home has to be multifunctional in the way other uses of interior design do not. If you only have one bathroom in your home, you're going to be doing more with it than the typical hotel guest does - washing the dog, coloring your hair, hanging underwear up to dry, sitting on the toilet playing phone games until your legs go numb, I don't know your life.

So when you see a room and go "I love that! I want to copy that for my home!" Ask yourself a few questions:

1. Is this space professionally cleaned?
Restaurant kitchens get a surgical-quality scrubdown every night. Hotel bathrooms employ maids who clean dozens of copies of the same bathroom every day and quickly become experts in scraping toothpaste scunge out of vessel sinks.

2. Is this space used the same way I would use mine?
My office has a showpiece of a kitchen, with white travertine counters and high-gloss white cabinets and pleasingly discreet, purpose-built places to stow away coffee cups and everything else people use. It's a joy to be in, but it's also the last thing I'd ever want in my own home, because there's nowhere to scrub a saucepan or store some knives, and even making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in there buys you five minutes scrubbing the counter so nothing mars the glittering white effect.

3. Will the effect be the same if I can't afford high-quality materials?
Pinterest is full of tragic DIY attempts to replicate really expensive luxury interior design touches. If a kitchen in Vogue Interiors has gold-plated cabinet pulls and you can only afford spraypaint, will you be happy with the result? Even something as subtle as choosing the wrong wood grain or stain can throw off the effect of a professionally-designed look. Better to ask yourself what you're responding to about the room - is it the color? The layout? The lighting? The fact that there are no dirty dishes in the shot?

Q: What are these primary/complementary colors people keep talking about?
A:

corgski fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jan 23, 2021

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 23:38

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 05:56

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Youth Decay posted:

Can we put a color wheel in the OP?

Done. I'll write up a better primer on color theory once it's not 1 AM and put that in as well.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2021 07:00

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Pick two.

My personal preference is properly installed (on a neat and logical grid) recessed cans on a dimmer (especially ones with an adjustable color temperature) for controlling the room�s ambient light levels with nice task and accent lighting in the places where I need it when I need it. That gets you the most flexibility and lets you dim things for a more elegant appearance at the expense of brightness.

Since you don�t want cans however, if you have crown moulding you could potentially hide indirect ceiling lighting in it which will also give you a very even ambient light in smaller spaces, but that comes at the expense of brightness and will fall off noticeably in the center of larger rooms.

corgski fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Aug 4, 2021

# ¿ Aug 4, 2021 08:43

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

What's old is new again, perhaps. These are reproductions of the original style of curtain rod installed in my 1910s arts and crafts foursquare.

https://kilianhardware.com/so38incuroda.html

corgski fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Aug 8, 2021

# ¿ Aug 8, 2021 22:54

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Danhenge posted:

Is there any way to get actual cast brass curtain rods? Does this make sense? My fiance is on a quest for them, but I don't know that they actually exist or make sense.

There are definitely people selling 3/8� brass rod for that style of curtain rod but I don�t know of any that are necessarily cast or have any decoration to them.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2021 03:48

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

That's the sort of armchair I've been trawling goodwill for recently, so like, figure thrift store pricing.

Reproduction queen anne-style doesn't really hold a ton of value unless you're someone stubbornly trying to outfit your house with furnishings that match its age.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2022 07:39

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Clearly no engineered joists were cut in that design.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2022 21:07

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

I've seen variations of this chair popping up on amazon from various sketchy aliexpress dropshippers - does anyone here know what it might be a dupe of aside from maybe 20 year old IKEA? I'm moving into an apartment next month which itself is an extremely dated loft with fixtures in the Factory Pomo/Decon-dustrial/Gen-X Home categories (to steal terms from Evan Collins' aesthetic boards) and I'm looking for furniture that would lean into that late 90s postmodernism rather than fight it.

As an example of the style, although the apartment I'm getting has medium grey carpet instead of wood floors:

# ¿ Nov 4, 2023 17:03

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Yeah I think I want more wood - I'm thinking less police interrogation room or navy mess hall and more IKEA catalog circa 1998-2003.

corgski fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Nov 5, 2023

# ¿ Nov 5, 2023 03:31

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

Anyone know of any decent furniture brands that do stuff in the memphis milano style? I want a garish 80s sideboard for my dining room (seriously)

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 02:27

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

I think the pastel checkerboard and noodle shapes design that's becoming trendy right now is a natural progression of memphis-style postmodernism, as it still leans heavily into color blocking and strong geometric shapes... Just more bezier curves to go with the triangles and circles. I've seen it called "Southwestern Memphis" in a few places although I don't know if that's any sort of official title.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 10:14

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

kreeningsons posted:

Closest I can think of off the top of my head is the multicolor console by Hay, which is very tame compared to any authentic memphis piece, but it has the color blocking at least. The memphis & �postmodern� buy/sell group on Facebook has some very garish second hand finds occasionally by unnamed designers. Most of the other clearly memphis inspired stuff I can find is as expensive as a used authentic memphis piece.

Gonna make me get a facebook account :negative:

That does look cool however! For reference, here's the apartment I'm gonna be putting the sideboard in. It's been described as "the native habitat of Memphis style" by Kaiser Schnitzel and "absolutely amazing" by a friend of mine who collects 80s contemporary furniture and posters. The sideboard would go off to the left out of frame against a wall there.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 17:14

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 05:56

corgski: Feb 6, 2007; Silly goose, you're here forever.

kreeningsons posted:

Ok so after seeing this space (amazing btw), this shop (etsy, instagram) has been going hard with re-covering otherwise ordinary pieces with Sottsass designed composite wood Alpi veneer. That�s the same stuff that is used as veneer on the Tartar and Freemont consoles. They have a few dressers, but maybe could convinced to do a custom piece which I think would fit pretty perfectly in this space. They beat me to this idea, I went as far as finding a supplier for this veneer a few years ago, but never got around to making my dream coffee table. poo poo, maybe I�ll ask if they�ll do a commission for me too.

Oh yeah ok, what they're doing is absolutely something that would work here. Thanks so much!

# ¿ Feb 24, 2024 02:02

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