The designers own brain is where the good ones go for inspiration. That brain is full of education on color theory, space planning, art history, architectural history, and lots of other book learning. And then there’s the knowledge gleaned from their failures. Which teaches as much or more than an internship and the source for a great sofa.
Using your knowledge of historical home styles, and the knowledge of light and proportion may have a designer using Duchamp’s Nude Decending a Staircase as a jumping off point for a great warm,light filled, closely correlated color palette, Hollywood Regency inspired Contemporary room.
(Pretend the chairs are a warm bark brown, like the painting colors, to better illustrate inspiration made design.)
Copying what someone else did first isn’t first tier design. Sure, there’s space planning, and proportion and scale involved. And that takes knowledge. But it isn’t creative to copy an “inspiration picture” of someone else’s work. Sadly, that is all the Internet Cult Decor sites seems to celebrate.
Pinning the copy, and you copy two friends, and they copy two friends, and so on, and so on. Generic and safe, because all your friends are doing the same thing. Or, risky and stupid, like galvanized roofing shower walls, or wood floating shelves above your range.
The good ideas get diluted by copy degradation, and the bad ones amplified by ignorance of any actual grounding in basic practical knowledge. Using the internet as inspiration turns off creativity and turns on Lemming Decorating. Not Design.
Look outside the design world for inspiration. Inspiration could be the sunset view from your picture window. Or your local botanical garden’s Japanese section, or the cold vertical steel of a city skyline, or a painting that always spoke to you.
Back in the early 80’s I once did a bedroom inspired by the woman’s calico cat. And not just to disguise the animal hair either. That woman loved that cat. It made her feel loved and like home. And so did the bedroom. Orange and black and white sounds kinda hideous. But it wasn’t. It was soft and warm and inviting with toile and some jacquard and a two cheap white fluffy rugs that were each machine washable because I hasn’t used one large rug too big to be practical for everyday life with a pet.
Find something that makes you feel. That’s your inspiration. And use it within the framework of the style of the home. It will never look wrong or dated to your eyes then. Your clod friend, maybe they ask you when you’re going to “update”. But well executed design doesn’t need to. It’s not “timeless”. It’s outsude fads is all.
Q
