Saturday, May 26, 2012

Meaningful interior design?

I have been reading Veranda today, the latest issue. 

The houses look like nobody lives in them.  The photos and interior designs are just so you can fill the photo with your own presence, I guess.  But they look so impersonal, in many cases like everything was bought and not gathered through a life. Even the antiques are mostly bought stuff. 

I feel like real families have a mish-mash of things that means something to them, but in these houses, do the pieces mean something or do they just look good together?  Because some of it looks fantastic, sure.  But does it have deeper meaning and emotional value on personal level? Or are these photos of these rooms like still-life paintings. 



I like houses that are charming, where the people have left their mark with the selection of things and furniture.  A kind of assemblage of personal experiences and interests that only living life and being curious about it can bring, not something you buy in a store.  Some of my favorite houses are very different from each other, but they are all alive, you can feel the presence of the owner.  I often feel like that is missing from these articles in these types of magazines.  It is too clinically clean, too perfect, too impersonal.  But my question is, do the photo designers do this on person so you can put yourself in the room in the picture?  So you can dream about YOU having that place, that it is available and unoccupied by someone else?  I don't know, what do you think?

2 comments:

city said...
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EH said...

I know what you mean, I feel the same and quickly turn pages. I do like design and home magazines, I like the innovative new furniture that comes around from time to time. "New classics". But the all white, clean, almost sterile places, to me they are not homes. It could well be a studio...I know that I like mismatch of furniture, but tuned together. Some people love their furniture from the 70´s, I have furniture from the 1870´s, (or maybe a little later) together with the much less interesting IKEA book shelfs and sofa.

I know what would happen if I moved in to one of those house studios, there would be books and embroideries and sewing threads on the table, a blanket thrown away on the sofa and lego on the floor... So, yes I would have that place, but transformed into my home.