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Find a Winter Design Trend to Suit Your Style

Don’t get stuck in a rut – we’ll help you find the right design trend to update your home. 

Last month we looked at the beauty of dark spaces, embracing the new retro and adding flowing lines in your home design and decor to come full circle into the new season.  

Top 3 Autumn Design Trends 

This month we are exploring three more exciting home design trends that will help you weather the winter like a pro. 

Design Trend 1: Going Green 

No – don’t worry. This isn’t yet another article about the environment and all the things you should feel guilty about (not yet) doing to save the planet.  

When we say green, we mean green. We mean deep, vibrant, luscious, middle-of-the-forest-green. And we don’t just mean on the walls or as accent colours in your décor.

Are You a Serial Plant Killer?  

The real secret to achieving the right balance of green in your living room is not to add artificial splashes of it, but to embrace the power of plants.  

The benefits of houseplants are well documented and we won’t get into it again, but let’s just ask: Who wouldn’t want cleaner air, an improved mood, lower levels of stress and anxiety and a whole range of air quality-related health benefits? 

Finding the right balance of plants for your living space is easy. Understand that plants need air, light and water. Look at your space, determine how much of each you have or can give the plant, and then pick the plant accordingly.  

Survival of the fittest 

Snake plants are notoriously hard to kill, a great air purifier and aesthetically pleasing. (If you are into minimalist, tall, spikey things!) 

A peace lily is another easy to keep alive plant. As are pothos and philodendrons, both of which can be kept as a creeper or supported – as it is not a more upright plant.  

Although many houseplants can live for multiple years and be kept happily indoors, don’t deny yourself the joy of a plant just because it might only survive for a couple of months in your house. Embrace the green magic of a home filled with plants…even if you sometimes have to buy them seasonally.  

The Same Goes For Living Spaces 

For maximalism to work as a design aesthetic, your house needs to be really neat.  

A minimalist may be able to get away with keys on the dining room table or kid’s shoes on the floor, but in a maximalist home, where those keys and shoes have to contend with a whole array of different décor items, each with their own style and story, the everyday items end up detracting from the aesthetic value of the décor.  

Maximalism stretches across eras and styles. You can have a mid-century couch and coffee table, an old-fashioned bookcase that you’ve filled up with your favourite fiction and sci-fi novels, and a wall hung with every Victorian-style botanical print you can get your hands on. Maximalism is about what you choose and how you colour in the canvas of your own home.  

For inspiration, and to see how maximalism is done right, look at these maximalist Instagram profiles.

Design Trend 3: Embrace Optimistic Earthy Tones 

Once you have got your houseplants settled and you’ve unpacked all your favourite décor items onto every surface in your house, why not bring it all together with the calm optimism of a good earthy, grounding, colour scheme. If you live in the northern part of the country, find your inspiration in the winter veld, the golden orange of a highveld sunset or the dappled beauty of a kudu. If you are a coastal dweller, think of sandy beaches, driftwood and sun-bleached seashells.  

Optimistic earth tones don’t mean dark, muddy colours.  

The inspiration here is beige with a hint of blush. A quiet greyish purple, like the morning sky just before the sun peaks over the horizon. Sunlight on wheat ready for the harvest. 

Embrace the beauty that comes with the watered-down South African winter sunlight. Live lightly and use these colours as the perfect binding force in your now verdant, maximalist living space.  

Maybe you’ll like this new hue (and you) so much, a trend will become a lifestyle and next year you won’t need to change a single thing about the place you call home