If you can’t make it to the beach this summer, why not bring the relaxing feeling you get when you’re lying on the shore to your home? A coastal interior theme can be as subtle or as a bold as you like, it doesn’t have to be all about seashells and anchor motifs! Using cooling colours and complementing patterns can create a calming, refreshed feeling in your home with just a few changes.
To get us into the holiday spirit and bring a little of the sea air into our homes, we invited our Design Lab partner and fabric painting expert, Zoe Glencross, to draw in on inspiration from the ever-popular nautical trend to create two themes that’ll whisk us away to a scenic beach scene in no time.
Over to you Zoe…
As a fabric designer, when I develop my collections, I often have in mind how they could be used in an interior scheme or as part of a collection of prints, colours and textures and these coastal themes showcase exactly how my current collection and exclusive fabrics for sofa.com (Slade Stripe and Mottram Meadow in the rich blue ‘anchor’ colourway and the vibrant on-trend ‘pink grapefruit’) works seamlessly with sofa.com’s range of shapes, styles and home accessories.
Classic Coastal
To create a timeless looking coastal scheme, start off with a fresh white backdrop to provide the underlying calming and relaxing atmosphere most recognised from being by the sea. Then build up cool blues, alongside classic shapes and my textured fabrics, Slade Stripe and Mottram Meadow, for a timeless design statement.
The focal point of this scheme is the beautiful Bluebell sofa in my Slade Stripe fabric in the cool ‘anchor’ colourway. This design adds interest to the room, without being too intrusive, and it can be as easily adapted to a country cottage, urban townhouse as well as a beach-front, coastal retreat.
To build the look of this design, I chose the matt steel Highbury mirror and Hepburn accent table to complement the look and draw out their contrasting classic angles, with a hint of industrial style. The window frame appearance of the Highbury mirror is a great way to open up a space, flooding light back into the room just as if you were throwing open the windows onto a bright, light morning at the beach.
I like to balance the stripes and geometric patterns of the furniture with a contrasting, large scale print in roman blinds or floor length curtains using fabric such as the Nordic Trail printed fabric in Pacific from my collection. Adding cushions to the sofas, such as the scatter cushions in my Paper leaf print partners perfectly with the Nordic Trail fabrics to create an elegant room with a clean, vibrant finish.
Contemporary coastal
This coastal scheme is a departure from the traditional blues and whites and is all about fresh colour and bold statements.
To create this look, for me the Walter sofa was the perfect ‘sofa with attitude’ with its retro angles and it felt perfect as the focal point for this design. It balances well with the simplicity of my bold and funky Slade Stripe design in pink grapefruit.
Layer your look and add contrast to the room’s appearance with additional punchy colourways, such as adding a scatter cushion in a bold aqua and pair with a storage footstool – both of which will fit effortlessly into the scheme against the pattern of the sofa.
To match the cushion and footstool my Nordic Trail or North Star fabrics in ‘med’ at the windows makes a bold, fresh design statement. I love the way the trellis effect of the Nordic Trail print with its sharp edged, paper cut design echoes the shape of the Walter sofa. Adding the Kensington round mirror is a fun but elegant nod to the coastal trend and if you need to add extra light to the room, opt for a angular floor lamp to finish off the look with a nod to retro styling.