Keeping up with the Joneses can get pretty tiring. And expensive!
Fortunately, there’s an easy alternative that happens to be perfect for this time of year: trans-seasonal decorating.
Trans-seasonal decorating basically means that you decorate your home in such a way that it feels neither summery nor wintery. Whether it’s because you’ve gone ultra-neutral, or because you’ve got a good balance of summery and wintery colours, trans-seasonal homes tend to feel the homiest all-year-round. It’s also perfect for those of us who love a certain base range of colours, textures, and styles, but just want to make little updates every now and then.
So, how does one go about creating a trans-seasonal home? Like most home decorating, it comes down to the essential elements: colours, textures, and styles.
COLOURS
Trans-seasonal homes are safe homes, when it comes to colours. Choose the colours of nature: beiges, greys, navies, taupes, olives, and any of the colours of our timber furniture are perfectly safe. If you feel like repainting your walls (and good on you if you’ve got the energy to do this!), go for warm whites or terracotta tones, which will help your home feel warm and inviting all year round.
After you’ve chosen your base colours, choose your accents. If you’re feeling on-trend, you could try painting a feature wall or buying some homewares with Pantone’s colour of the year: 19-4052 Classic Blue.
Pro tip: if you add these pops of colours using cushions, coasters, or other home accessories, you can make your home feel more summery or wintery in a matter of seconds. Swap sunlight yellow cushions with wine stained coloured cushions on your sofa and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
TEXTURES
Trans-seasonal homes are also safe when it comes to textures. This doesn’t mean you can’t mix and match, it just means that you should probably avoid going for anything too extravagant. So, up the ante with the plainer weaves and embroidery, and tone down the velvet. Unless it’s a statement piece, of course!
Also, consider your quilts, blankets, rugs, linen, and the like. As well as it being practical to change these with the seasons, it makes style sense for the trans-seasonal home. After all, you could hardly call a home with thick throw rugs lying around “trans-seasonal” when it’s 47 degrees in the shade!
So, what I’m suggesting is that you let your trans-seasonal home adapt to the weather. When it’s warm, use a thin throw rug for the cooler evenings and early mornings, or no throw rug at all. When it’s cool, then you’ve got every excuse to get cosy under a thicker throw. Or two. (We don’t blame you.)
STYLES
Don’t think of trans-seasonal decorating as a style. Think of it more as a methodology that is applicable to a broad range of styles. This means you don’t have to choose between industrial and trans-seasonal, or shabby chic and trans-seasonal, or whatever your preferred furniture style is and trans-seasonal. It just means that, rather than going for eccentric decorations that feel a bit silly as soon as they’re no longer on-trend, you think hard about what feels the most homey to you, and what will endure in your home (and, alternatively, what is going to be easy to change if you feel like your home needs an update).
If you're looking for even more tips, check out our blog about how to create everlasting style. See you there!