The English style is a deep blending of the visual characteristics of the Georgian and Victorian eras with the addition of a colonial touch created by the positioning of the United Kingdom of those times as a colonial empire. The spread of the interests of this country to distant corners of Asia and the East contributed to the appearance of the British exquisite gizmos from India and China. They reliably served as confirmation of wealth, as well as the high social status of their owners. To create an English style in the interior of an apartment, it is necessary to take goodness, respectability, and solidity as starting points. If Conan Doyle, Dickens, Wilde, Chesterton and Agatha Christie are dear to you, then cool restraint and a strong commitment to tradition is the best option for decorating your home.
Main elements
The main idea, the central axis around which the furnishings are strung together, creating an English style in the aggregate, is symmetry. The arrangement of windows, shelves, armchairs, sofas, floor lamps is symmetrical; it is traditional to use duplicate items and accessories in a pair.
Elements that emphasize the belonging of the interior to the chosen style direction: square carpets, numerous portraits, a fireplace, collections behind glass, nice furniture, an armchair with ears, quilted sofas, chairs upholstered in floral chintz, heavy curtains, double ceiling lamps, many pillows, porcelain trinkets, clock and bronze.
The walls, as in the times of Sherlock Holmes, are half covered with oak panels or dies, finished with mahogany veneer. Pour over the upper part of the wallpaper or paint it. Preferred colors for common rooms: maroon, silver-green (sage leaf color), thick gray, dark blue. The wallpaper is characterized by an acanthus or Damascus ornament, or three-dimensional bouquets tied with gold ribbons. Private rooms are decorated with wallpaper of light colors with a small floral pattern.
A special place in the British interior is occupied by draperies - three-dimensional, multi-folded, tied with tassels or pickups at a height of about a meter, arranged in waves on the floor.
Heavy curtains are sewn double-layered, on a dense lining. This technique is used so that the curtains do not burn out from the sun, and their folds keep their shape well.
Traditionally used dyed fabric, cell, strip, flower. The windows of the living room, office, dining room are decorated with curtains of white muslin and curtains of expensive materials: velvet, satin, brocade. In the summer, thick curtains are recommended to be replaced with lighter cotton fabrics.
Walk around the English house
As the theater begins with a hanger, so the English style begins literally from the front door. The aroma of old England, the first accent of the English style is instantly felt when you approach it: on the paneled door, in addition to the ordinary door handle, there is a door knocker. It is not necessary that this item be made like a real hammer. By design, it is a bracket with a protruding part that strikes a metal plate. Now, as two hundred years ago, it is made in the form of a ring, a head of a lion, a mythical animal, and many other interesting options, such as the human palm. This attribute of the entrance group immediately emphasizes the belonging of your interior to the English style. The entrance door of the Victorian era was painted in dark green, cinnamon-red or black paint, highlighting the texture of the wood. Now designers continue to use this technique.
The apartment, the interior of which has absorbed the spirit of British traditions, implies the presence of a large number of rooms. Each of them plays its own role, creating the scenery for a specific time period of human life: living room, study, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, children (or even a separate study). What are the distinctive features of space according to its purpose?
The ideal living room, corresponding to this style direction, is a room with a high ceiling and a bay window. Required large, elongated windows, starting almost from the floor. The dominant living room, a symbol of the house and its main decoration is an open fireplace, with a black cast-iron firebox placed inside. Facing the fireplace is made of marble, carved wood or tiles. Cutting off the intense heat, a decorative screen is placed in front, and a large mirror framed by a parade frame, or a picture, takes its place above the fireplace.
Strictly opposite the fireplace there is a voluminous furniture group: a sofa, armchairs and banquettes, surrounded by small attached tables with paired floor lamps or vases.
Mirror sideboards, rounded glass display cases or slides are placed on both sides of the fireplace, and collections of porcelain (Chinese, English), watches and bronze are exhibited inside them, as well as on the mantelpiece. Clockwork mechanisms under glass hubcaps, elegant statuettes or the finest objects from the great-grandmother's set — these are family values here.
The walls of the living room are decorated with paintings in heavy gilded frames, ceremonial family portraits and photographs. A special feature is a very dense weighing, i.e. the distance between the pictures is chosen as minimal as possible.
The main content of the traditional English interior cabinet - it is a book. They are placed on open shelves up to the ceiling itself, completed with fillets, a cornice, possibly pilasters. Engravings are placed on the walls, and from furniture, apart from a desk or a bureau, a sofa group is assumed, necessarily surrounded by small tables. The severity of the lines, muted paint should help create a working mood.
The heart of the bedroom is a high bed, and its distinctive features are a volumetric headboard, a valance decorated with frills and festoons, a canopy on the posts (option used at will), a huge number of pillows. At the foot of the bed set ottoman. Symmetrically the bed has bedside tables, night lamps, on the contrary - a dressing table with an armchair or a pouf. The walls of the bedroom are decorated with prints, lithographs, photographs in thin frames. Curtains are made from cotton or linen fabrics, duplicating wallpaper or upholstery materials used for upholstered furniture.
The most important British-style symbols in the kitchen are gigantic stoves, metal dishes, copper pots hung on the walls, ceramic pots and porcelain on open shelves, dark tiled tiled floor, and a faience deep rectangular sink.
The interior of a small apartment
If your love for the “tide of shred” is excessively large, then it is quite possible to reproduce the modern style of a classic English house in a small apartment, but before starting work you should ask yourself: “Is it convenient to live, feeling like a sightseer (or even an exhibit) of a historical museum, especially if it is not at the head of the Thames, but inside an ordinary modern building? "
A better and more elegant solution would be to think of a simple classic English interior, but to make a certain reference to England, add a light aroma of foggy Albion, using objects that have indisputable belonging to the British style as accents.
When developing an English design for placing a small volume, it is important to preserve the main trends: symmetry and pairing, but the main thing is not to clutter the space. Take only everything you need: a sofa, a square carpet, a fireplace (false fireplace), attached tables. Instead of the traditional desk with tumbami, you can use the office with a folding or rolling lid. This piece of furniture is very functional and takes up much less space. Floral curtains, cotton upholstery, quilted furniture Chesterfield, Victorian paint in the wallpaper, gentleman's chair, British flag print on the pillows, as a designer joke - these elements will give your house the desired flavor, but not overload it with the massiveness of the old Of England.
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