Tag Archives: industrial

Minimalism is the process of eliminating clutter. The decorative accessories are thrown out. Only the key pieces are salvaged. Everything is stripped to the bare essentials: colours, materials, and furniture. This gives greater depth to the decor, which is, to be frank, quite refreshing.

Minimalism is at the centre of the contemporary style, but it can also be expressed through other styles, like the rustic, lounge, industrial (loft, among others) decors or the shaker design, which is probably the barest look of all.

The simplicity of minimalism resides more in the shape and number of pieces than in the style itself. Sometimes, a room is so bare that only one expression comes to mind to describe it: it is naked.

The monochrome design is one of the secrets of minimalism. Usually, the colours are neutral. More often than not, everything is white, from the ceilings to the floors, as is the furniture. If not, you will find two colours, seldom three. Oftentimes, it’s the same colour that fades out into different shades. Featured somewhere: a concrete floor painted in turquoise with a sofa of the same colour.[……]

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Brick is just as useful as it is beautiful. You can use bricks for pretty much everything: exterior siding, interior decorating, and backyard landscaping, whether it is a recreational space or a garden. Plus, this material offers such a broad range of colours and it offers so many visual effects!

There’s the crude brick, used especially for exterior siding, but there is also the decorative brick used for interior decorating. The range of colours and shades is impressive. It also comes in many different shapes since brick is a material that can be carved.

You could paint brick. What makes it special is its texture. A white-painted brick wall has so much more to offer than a white-painted sleek wall. The white colour is not as white, but it stands out because of its rugged design. The same is true of a black-painted brick wall. It looks nothing like a black-painted sleek wall. It’s not as black, but it stands out more. Same goes for every other colour.

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There is a downside to this, however. If you paint a brick wall, you will shorten its lifetime because you’re preventing the brick and the mortar from breathing. You will have to check it regularly and make the necessary corrections if you want to avoid going through the whole process again. Otherwise, you could follow the guidelines of Écohabitation experts.

The brick doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. A brick with jagged sides and overflowing mortar offers a different look. You could also distress the brick to make it imperfect. Some people even marble the brick to make it look more rugged.[……]

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It is disruptive, bothersome, eccentric. Yet, there is a way to use red, the colour of love and joie de vivre, without overpowering a room. Let’s take a closer look.

Some rooms we’ve seen are entirely red, from top to bottom, including the furniture. They are, how can we put it, festive and flamboyant, but still bearable. Why? Because, different shades of softer and more subdued reds, like brick red or cherry red, came to tone down the fire-engine red, which dominated the rooms.

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Red has a striking elegance but can show restraint if used properly. A single wall painted in red, or even half a wall, can add a healthy dose of cheerfulness to a room without being overpowering. Red is so rich and upbeat. Why go without it?

A single touch of red can liven up a room, such as the back of an unglazed bookcase, the back of a dining room cabinet, the kitchen island or the backsplash under the cupboards in the kitchen, the steps of the staircase, the window curtains or bed curtains, the wall rug or area rug.

Red can also emphasize an object we are proud to own. For example, a bright red pillow placed on a prestigious sofa or armchair, a red base under a valuable trinket or a red fabric flowing down a magnificent wicker basket.[……]

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Often created in decommissioned industrial buildings, lofts offer an immense open space to decorate, a single room whose dimensions are around 500 square metres, with ceilings of up to three metres and more.

Few doors, few walls, often nothing at all. A wave of natural light from the long vertical windows along the wall floods the central space. Added to these windows you sometimes find a windowed façade, skylights or windows on the ceiling.

Wood or steel beams, concrete, brick and metal surfaces are everywhere. And the abandoned vestiges of the building’s past: pulleys, wooden cases, platforms, giant washbasins, air conditioning conduits, steel tables, oversized chimney.

What do you do with this unrefined decor? Make it your home.

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Once the cleaning work is done, the real work starts. Most owners keep traces of the building’s former vocation for decorative purposes. That’s what makes a loft a loft. That’s what separates it from a penthouse.

If partitions are needed for a certain intimacy, they should be as discreet as possible in order to maintain the continuity of the space and let the light flood in. That is why complete walls are rare. Or areas are combined, such as the living room and dining room. Or low walls, mobile screens, opaque or trans lucid panels are added.  

A loft is a paradise for colour. Owners often use colour to divide the space into areas: one dominant colour per area, or one dominant colour on the ground floor and a second on the upper floor, which is usually a mezzanine.[……]

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