Scandinavian interior design is a style that you may not even notice in your daily life. Essentially, it’s just a renovation, finish, or background for living. Decorative accents and thematic details can change from season to season (like tropical pillows on pink and gold glamorous vases), but the foundation remains the same.
This foundation consists of white or gray parquet flooring, white walls with accent details, light-colored furniture, plenty of built-in wooden cabinets and buffets, white shelving units and simple textiles.
Scandinavian style is perfect for those who love spaciousness and a sense of freedom in their apartment!
Scandinavian interior design is the perfect choice for those who want to save on their home decor without sacrificing style. It’s also great for families with kids – markers, broken vases, or spilled milk won’t ruin expensive furniture and decor, which means you won’t have to empty your wallet when your kids play their favorite games.
In Scandinavian interior design, the main focus is often on investing in key areas such as the kitchen, built-in wardrobes, entryway, and storage furniture such as dressers, buffets, and nightstands. However, items like the dining room, sofas, beds, textiles, and decor tend to be purchased affordably and in simple designs.
Scandinavian style is considered the most accessible option for a small apartment even in the high-end price range, and it’s true. Among trendy and cutting-edge styles, Scandinavian is the best option.
Scandinavian design may seem simple at first glance, but with the right color accents, interesting textiles and tableware, posters and photographs on the walls, it can transform into an art studio.
In a small apartment, the light, compact, and narrow furniture of Scandinavian style is especially useful.
White, gray, beige, light-brown, ash-coffee, and milky-coffee shades of Scandinavian furniture are perfect for narrow, dark, and small rooms.
In a small apartment, standard Scandinavian interior design ideas such as glass partitions, an open plan kitchen-living room, setting up a children’s room or a home office on a balcony, a combined bathroom, and built-in wardrobes in the bedroom have proven to be very effective.
Another great feature of Scandinavian design is that its simple finish allows you to easily change the interior style to Provence, modern, neoclassical, or minimalism at any time, according to your preference, by adding appropriate decorative elements!
The interior of a Scandinavian style kitchen is loved by those who spend a lot of time cooking. Here, you’ll find wide and long countertops (the set is often purchased in maximum length and mounted along the window wall), light-colored cabinets, many modules with glass-lit buffets, open shelves, and built-in appliances.
The best match for such a kitchen is a pastel-colored glass backsplash (mint, pink, blue, yellow) with mosaic patterns (Moroccan, Arabic prints, damask, or imitation glass mosaic), as well as a simple white or gray tile or ceramic granite backsplash resembling marble.
To add a touch of luxury to your kitchen, use more built-in lighting, marble countertops, expensive tableware (with gold, silver, or copper accents), high-end appliances, and a side-by-side refrigerator with swinging doors.
A typical Scandinavian kitchen delights homemakers with a large number of drawers rather than doors. Some variants open with just a push on the front panel and have no handles. Being more minimalist than traditional options, they look great in tiny kitchens.
The household appliances in a Scandinavian kitchen are typically standard gray steel or white, just like the sink and other chrome details. However, in kitchens that lean towards minimalism or loft style, glossy black appliances look great, especially if the countertops or backsplash are also black.
Typically, in a Scandinavian interior design, the kitchen and living room are combined in one room during a renovation, separated only by a thin partition, sliding glass doors (or screens), or a dining group. However, a better solution is a kitchen island with a breakfast bar, which saves space on the dining group while also adding a work surface (or placing a stove with a hood on it).
СA Scandinavian kitchen impresses with even the small details – modern tableware, appliances, stylish monochromatic textiles, Scandinavian symbolic decor (candlesticks, vases, sculptures, posters) – all of which creates an atmosphere of cozy living in a big city.
A living room in Scandinavian style will impress you with its simplicity. When it is tidy, it looks almost empty, which can’t help but please. Every day, our homes are filled with a multitude of colorful things (packaging, children’s toys, clothing, purchases, decor), so a living room that is open to light and air is what any young family needs in a small apartment.
In Scandinavia, the living room is not a place for hosting guests. Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians usually meet with friends at bars and restaurants, cafes, yoga classes, and other sports activities. Therefore, the living room here is designed for the exact number of people who live in the household. Extra chairs, ottomans, or a second sofa are not needed if there are only 1-3 people in the family.
If we are talking about a studio, one-bedroom apartment, or a former communal apartment, a Scandinavian living room often serves as a bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and workspace. Therefore, visual zoning is often unnecessary, except for practical floor design (ceramic tiles for the kitchen, laminate/hardwood for the living room).
Such an interior typically remains monochrome (gray and white, black and white, pastel and white) even after you have purchased all the decor, photo posters, and dishes.
In its original form, a Scandinavian living room often has a bay window, a balcony, high ceilings with moldings, a fireplace, and an area of over 25 square meters (which is even small for three-room apartments in Stockholm, for example), and in new homes – panoramic glazing with access to a large terrace.
Scandinavian design can be divided into modern and traditional styles. Modern style includes more minimalist trends with various colors, accents, colored walls, and unusual decor. Meanwhile, traditional style leans more towards country, conservatism, classic wooden furniture, and simple decor typical of the style.
That’s why a Scandinavian bedroom can be both minimalist and urban, as well as provincial and very cozy, close to the shabby-chic style. More often, people opt for a middle ground – a simple white wardrobe, but with a luxurious colorful textile headboard, subtle curtains, but a luxurious glass or gold lamp on the nightstand. Thus, the interior of a Scandinavian-style bedroom is assembled from literally 10 items, and that’s where the design really ends.
A Scandinavian bedroom is often white or gray-white, as its size is usually small, and owners want to keep the space visually light and spacious. Therefore, all furniture should be in light tones, with the exception of a chair or ottoman and a textile headboard.
If you want to add some color to your bedroom, consider a painting in the styles of Fauvism, early Impressionism, or minimalism. High-quality photo galleries, photo posters, and family photo albums in an asymmetrical layout are also popular. Another way to add color to the interior is to buy a bright throw blanket of any shade (such as fuchsia or lavender), a rug (with an Arabic print), or to paste wallpaper on an accent wall!
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