One of the most popular trends in interior design involves mixing different styles, especially when it comes to more traditional and modern design. Obviously, there are many ways to achieve this look and approaches to take. In that respect, you can go for a more eclectic vibe, vintage-inspired or even shabby chic or minimal. The options are endless and it all depends on your personal taste and preferences. But if you need proper ideas to get you started or inspire you, keep on reading.
Match the colors and materials
A very popular way of mixing modern and traditional involves matching these different styles by color or material. Essentially, if you have an upholstered sofa, for instance, featuring rich and colourful patterns, you want to look into décor details, such as vases, curtains, rugs and/or cushions that feature at least one identical shade. Furthermore, you can also match the wooden or metal part of that sofa construction to a coffee table or a bookshelf made of the same material.
Go with complete contrast
Another interesting solution for mixing traditional and modern is on the completely opposite end of the spectrum compared to the previous one. Namely, you can disregard the matching aspect 100% and go with the absolute contrast instead. This particular way of mixing modern and traditional may seem easier at first but keep in mind that it can actually be rather tricky. After all, your goal here is to really focus on complete contrast, which means that the elements you introduce into your apartment should differ from one another greatly. This is the practice that will make the contrasting tactic ultimately successful.
Don’t go overboard with furniture
When you’re mixing different design styles in your apartment, and especially when you’re dealing with two rather different designs, it’s crucial that you stop yourself from filling up the space with furniture too much. A cluttered apartment without a functional layout will only look like a mess, especially with the mix of different styles. For instance, you can focus on mid century furniture, which is rather effective in its design in regards to matchups with other styles, and then introduce features and accent pieces of something more vintage-inspired through details, textures and décor.
Play with accessories
In case you find furniture combinations too overwhelming right from the start, the best way to go when mixing modern and traditional is concerned is to use accessories to the fullest. In that sense, you have even more creative freedom to achieve the look you want in your apartment. Curtains, cushions, rugs, tablecloths, throws, vases, bowls, figurines, picture frames, plant pots and so on are all interesting details that can effectively add a touch of personality and spruce up the vibe of your personal environment.
Don’t forget about your walls
Walls can be really important and sometimes even crucial for an effective and stylish mix of modern and traditional in one’s home. For starters, you can use your walls as the biggest feature of one particular design. Let’s say that you mostly have modern furniture pieces in your apartment; you can embellish your walls with traditional wallpaper patterns or darker, gothic-inspired paintwork to introduce a new style into your interior. In the same way, your elaborate, vintage-like furniture design would look even greater when surrounded by more minimal, modern wall paint in white or neutral shades.
Obviously, you can always plan and visualize how you want your apartment to look beforehand and then continue with work accordingly. On the other hand, if you’re not one for planning, proceed with the design mix as you see fit, but always make it a point to take a step back, leave the area and then return to get the right feel of how everything looks. That way, you’ll know whether you should make some changes or not.
