Four Rooms

With apologies to the four directors of the movie. We are excerpting four styles from the book Textures & Colours for Interiors, An Inspirational Guide to Decorating Your Home by Katherine Sorrell.

Available at National Book Store and Powerbooks, Textures & Colours takes the guesswork out of harmonizing the home with a flip book chart for color, floor covering, texture and fabric.

Urban Luxury

The simplicity of a living room designed around neutral colors provides welcome relief from hectic city life; with careful planning, this type of scheme provides a retreat in which to relax, re-energize and refresh your spirits.

Choose luxurious fabrics and plumply-padded upholstery and you won’t be able to resist throwing yourself onto the couch and putting your feet up. Pale colors – such as sand, taupe, fawn and ivory – can be mixed with darker accents, or you could opt for a bolder look that makes the most of black, navy or chocolate.

A beautiful rug can be the focus of a room just as much as a fireplace or a work of art, with the added benefit of providing softness underfoot. And, while color and pattern are important, texture is crucial: the pile may be short and dense, long and fluffy or, as in the room on the left, cut three-dimensionally for interest and impact. Rugs are enormously versatile (use several different types together in a room for an even more character-full look), and they work particularly well as a foil to wood or stone flooring, though they’re just as nice laid over a plain-fitted carpet.

The fabrics you select for a living room are all-important. The gentle sheen of leather can be contrasted with the matte depth of velvet, for example, or coarse wool with the silky tactility of chenille. Window treatments benefit from generosity: full-length linen drapes alongside sheer muslin play on the themes of heavy and light, sheer and opaque, while being highly practical, too. Some modern sheer fabrics have fabulous metallic surfaces, crinkle weaves or even patterns made from opaque appliqués – their textural uses are endless.

To create character, use furniture and accessories that have strong shapes – perhaps round, square or rectangular – and add dramatic lighting which will further define their forms and surface finishes.

Country Comfort

Natural materials offer a variety of surfaces that are irresistibly tactile. If they’re rough, rugged or unfinished in appearance, it will only increase their rustic charm.

It’s hard to beat the pleasant informality of piles of fat cushions topping a traditional-style couch. To unify this look, ensure that colors are complementary rather than disparate, and that patterns are muted rather than obvious.

The roughness of a woven fiber flooring and the strong lines of wooden furniture provide an attractive background to the room shown opposite – you need hard surfaces to create a structural background, even in a soft and comfortable living area. And in a room like this, it’s ideal to display pieces that have a craft-like ethos, an attractive, unsophisticated quality such as country-style stools, vases, lanterns and wood-framed pictures.

Introducing a touch of bold color or pattern – in the form of a rug, a throw, a painting or a piece of pottery – can enliven a neutral color scheme without detracting from its subtle sophistication. Its woven finish contrasts nicely with the more nubby surface of the coir flooring, which in turn makes a welcome change from walls that have been painted with smooth emulsion.

Think carefully about providing a well-balanced mix of textures – this room, though very simple in style, is full of interesting texture, from the satiny gleam of cast iron and glazed pottery to the roughness of wicker and old wood, to the rather more elegant appearance of a waffle blanket and fake-fur cushion. It just goes to show how deceptive neutral color schemes can be: the effect here is warm and welcoming in an intriguing yet beguiling way.

Cool Character

Using pale colors emphasizes space and a clutter-free room can be like a holiday home in its feeling of freedom and relaxation. That said, an interesting combination of materials can still be intriguing, even fun.

Paneling walls with wood is one way to add warmth, character and an inherent beauty to a room; contrasted with them in the living room on the far left is the smooth coldness of a stone slab floor and the ridged surface of the bamboo mat – an unusual item that’s slightly playful in feel yet at the same time extremely practical. A fluffy flokati rug or a cord carpet would have very different, yet equally attractive, effects. Smoothness is repeated in the fabric that’s been used to cover the modular couch: if pale-colored upholstery appeals to you, ensure the covers can be unzipped and washed by machine.

One option if you have wooden boards is to cover them with glossy paint. The ultra-reflective gleam of the floor in the central room shows off to best advantage the timeless yet ever-so-simple combination of wood, cane and metal.

Good-quality wooden floors, however, are best left bare. Parquet is always impressive. Classic meets contemporary in the choice of a boxy armchair covered in brushed cotton and topped with velvet cushions, while the hide rug pulls the room together with a defiantly individual attitude. Neutral schemes often benefit from just such a dash of personality, whether it’s a striped zebrano-wood side table, a hairy throw or an inflatable plastic fruit bowl. It’s a basic rule of decorating: plan carefully, but don’t be afraid to be yourself.

Warm and Cozy

For a living room that envelops you with a welcoming calm, choose a color palette that ranges from ivory to dark chocolate, and combine with rich, soft, three-dimensional textures.

Whether your home is old or new, urban or rural, creating an atmosphere of relaxed indulgence is simply a matter of getting the basics right. A floor in an understated color – perhaps warm sand, dove gray or pale coffee – is both practical and attractive; choose ribbed wool or sisal for textural interest topped with a rug in similarly simple shades.

Walls can be painted with emulsion for an easy, informal look, or else covered with a textured paper: try hessian, cork, metallic foil or raffia for a more unusual effect. At the windows, maximize light by hanging sheer white muslin from a simple wooden or metal pole – its soft gauziness is yet another interesting texture.

These are your starting points. Next, consider furniture. You will undoubtedly want a squashy couch with washable loose covers made from a comfy fabric such as brushed cotton, velvet or jumbo cord. An armchair might be in leather or rattan (avoid matching suites if you’re aiming for a modern yet laid-back look) with a good reading lamp nearby. Suede or leather cubes in different sizes are sophisticated and versatile, while a square coffee table, in wood, glass or metal, adds a welcome note of hard texture to the mix.

Last, top your seating with a variety of interesting throws and cushions; stick to your basic color scheme but use your imagination when it comes to choosing fabric; knitted wool, woven leather, linen trimmed with feathers, fleece, denim or silk, for example. And add a few beautiful accessories such as wooden bowls, leather boxes, glass or gourd vases, paper lamps and, of course, some deliciously-scented candles.