INTERIOR DESIGN ACCORDING TO SOMEONE WHO KNOWS VERY LITTLE ABOUT IT

I love my living space.

I am a workaholic who is rarely at home. But when I am home, I want to be in a home that I look forward to coming home to. It is consistently the best part of even the kindest day. It’s why I hold on to my sanity when there in nothing to soothe my frayed nerves during a trying day. I visualize getting home, flinging away my laptop bag and plopping onto my couch after quickly divorcing my shoes and any piece of clothes I can finesse off my complaining body. It is a routine I run through with the entitlement of one who has earned his stripes during the day. One who deserves every piece of the comfort my TV blanket has to offer me. This is when I am ready to scoff steak and garlic bread in front of a Netflix show I believe I can commit to until the end credits (I have a fluffy Newspaper themed blanky I keep exclusively on the living room couch to veg out).

I really love my living space.

It is the den of solitude to which I retreat when I am back to hating being around people. When I need to recharge my extrovert levels to a competent level. It is only fair that I dress the den up to be worthy. I know next to nothing about interior design. I just know I want my home to appeal to me. I want to feel I should be back soon when I look back at the place on my way out the front door. My crowning achievement thus far was my home in Northriding, some years back. It was my first effort in decorating my living space alone after a breakup and moving out. I went only on instinct and the moment. I went crazy.

The main theme was black, red and white. My favourite colours. I had a black couch, TV stand, kettle, kitchen countertop, white everything else. My dining table was two quarters black and two red and they alternated colours to give it a pie look I loved, accompanied by two red chairs and two black ones. It was close to looking like a casino floor on acid. I had to have a friend drag me shopping for new wall art and deco to break the colour scheme craze I was clinging to. She taught me about colour spread and contrast, how I would appreciate the colours I loved more when they were nestled against the backdrop of other colours and designs. I was sold on the strength of contrast. I never looked back.

I have developed a tidy little system for building up the look in my place. It may be rudimentary, but it works. My present home is my current project and I am at stage one there: Framing.

I choose an establishing space within my quarters and build the style and colour spread around that. This time it is the TV, the TV stand and couch. These were the survivors of the purge when I went insane and replaced almost every item I had because the ‘new place had a different personality to the last one’. I am trying desperately to keep the black to the stand and TV only this time, choosing to thread along creative plains way beyond the familiar lucid artworks that were my recent homes. I am looking at anchoring a dark here and brightening it with some peripheral deco or utensils. Dark wall art between bright light mirrors, a black kettle next to a luminescent toaster (which I never use), murals on a handwash liquid dispenser in a bathroom aside a multicolored towel assortment. There are no limits. I am now admittedly in throes of a heady combination – wanting to break my past rules about deco and creating a project that has no definite end. It must always suggest a space for a new direction or change to it. I will basically wreck whatever status quo exists for interior design with my own organic insanity. It will be marvelous to behold!!! (Mwahahaha)

Should my place end up looking like the work of a kid with too much crayons and steady access to sugar, so be it. I doubt there is a definite science to art, and I believe interior deco is no less subjective a technique than any other art.

I like to depart into any project after posing the time-honoured question ‘Why should I give a shit about what I want to achieve?’. This venture is no different.

Enjoyment, learning, changing, laughing, frustration, pride.

And of course, that warm feeling of ease and calm once I unlock the front door and walk into my sanctuary of possibility and temporarily hating people’s company.

Guest blog by : Atticus Finch