Bringing Life to Living Rooms: The Power of Stuff
The photo albums on the bookcase, the family pictures up the stairs, and the trinkets on the mantel: It’s the age-old question of “what makes a house a home?” What provides us with comfort in where we reside, is it the overall design of the home, or is it the items within the home that provide us with sentimental value?
It may seem obsolete to evaluate the topic, however one of the most vital aspects (if not a requirement) of an interior designer is to provide the client with safety, comfort, joy, and efficiency where they reside. Understanding how the human race interacts with the world around us, the world we build for ourselves, and the objects placed within those four walls is key.
Humans collect things and hold sentimental value in objects because it’s rooted in our need for emotional connection and identity. Having a conscious recognition of life’s temporary nature and our individual life cycles, we create value and purpose in what’s tangible and quantifiable. We hold value in the physical in order to provide us with more control of the intangible. What we classify as our “home” perfectly explains these needs to connect with our physical world - our home provides a narrative. A person’s home is the autobiography most don’t get to write.
Humanity as a species lives on the delicate cusp between consciousness and the incomprehensible. We are capable of rational thought and understanding of our world, yet constantly confronted with things beyond our full comprehension, from the vastness of the universe to the fundamental questions of life, death, and meaning. We hold self-awareness to the point of recognizing our insignificance in the larger world, as well as our fragility as a human being and our ephemerality. We recognize that with age things like memory and recall fade, and so we turn to physical items that hold sentimental value to provide our singular lives with value and significance.
So how does this pertain to interior design? What does this mean for the current trends of minimalism and modernism that tend to strip homes of these items? Are we diminishing the significance of objects and “things” just to make the most “aesthetic” looking space? Most of the time, the trends seen in fashion line up very closely to the trends seen in the design world. In the last 5 - 10 years we’ve seen a rise in people dressing in greys, beiges, and neutrals - minimal prints and patterns. Interestingly enough, there’s also been a significant increase in parents dressing their children the same way. With social media at the forefront of people’s minds, people are dressing and living in spaces that look “picture perfect”. We are making our homes and our lives look like showrooms. It begs the question of how is this impacting the next generation of children? How do they comprehend life, do they hold sentimental significance to objects, and their homes?
The 70s fashion & interior design trends - loud patterns, dynamic shapes, bright colors
Current fashion & interior design trends - minimalistic, muted colors, simple forms and lines
Looking at these two images, if I asked which one had a “lived in” and loving family - which would you naturally say? That’s not to say both didn’t have that - but we have an immediate, natural response to say the one that tells a story and provides sensory engagement.
As an interior designer, I’m not saying we should be throwing a bunch of old family photos on the walls and shelves and saying, job done. It’s about balance and about recognizing as an interior designer that once you get your photo and leave that site, it becomes someone’s home. A good designer will create something that identifies with the client but that’s also malleable and can grow with the client. If a person’s home is their autobiography, the designer's job is to help write the prologue.