How to do a Scandinavian Style Home Makeover

The Scandinavian style has made a lasting impression on the home makeover and renovation scene.

With a beautifully subdued colour palette and minimalist-style furniture, it’s no surprise the Scandi look has become popular for modern homes.

What does a Scandinavian style home look like?

Some key elements of Scandi design include:

• A focus on form and function when considering furniture
• The use of neutral colours and light flooring
• Incorporation of greenery or botanicals
• Wooden or metallic accents or finishes are also a popular design choice, especially when working with warmer textiles to contrast the lighter aspects of a room.

With the basics explained, here are some suggestions and inspiration for an extraordinary Scandinavian home makeover.

Dining Rooms and Kitchens

Scandinavian styling often focuses on light coloured timber and a subdued palette of natural tones, whites and greys.

This creates the perfect opportunity for showcasing a honed or polished concrete floor in the kitchen and dining area, adding to the clean lines and low maintenance finish.

When designing the dining room, Scandi style embraces contrast. The dining table itself can be a different colour or material to the seating, for example, a light beechwood table top with white steel chairs.

As for kitchens, a white or grey concrete or stone benchtop is perfectly suited to timber cupboards and drawers. Function is an important aspect in Scandinavian design, and chrome or metallic accents are easy to include in kitchens, with sinks, fixtures, lighting, ovens, door handles, and even steel racks or exposed shelving to display kitchen appliances for easy access.

Living Rooms

Living rooms are designed for comfort and relaxation, and a Scandinavian colour palette and furniture selection creates the perfect space to enjoy with family and friends.

Honed or polished concrete flooring provides a sleek, allergy-friendly foundation for your living area, making it ideal for families with children and people with pets.

Decorating the space can vary from leather or vinyl couches and patterned rugs, to more basic timber and linen furniture, decorated with cushions and throw rugs.

Coffee tables also provide a great opportunity to experiment with styles, from using reclaimed timber, to a more modern, edgy look of plain block colour.

Bathrooms and Laundries

The Scandi style can even be extended to the bathroom and laundry.

Using wooden shelving in the laundry opens the possibility of tucking washing machines and dryers away. Again, minimising the mess and creating a clear, calm space should be the focus.

For bathrooms, remember concrete flooring is ideal for wet areas. Taking a similar approach to the kitchen, you could extend the use of decorative concreteto create vanity benchtops and enclose the basin.

Lighting

Another easy way to bring a bit of Scandinavia into your home is with lighting.

Experimenting with colours, height, levels and layers, you might look to feature a showcase piece above the kitchen bench or dining table, while scaling back on size in other areas.

Fixtures and bulbs aren’t the only source of light to consider. Natural sunlight should be optimised to compliment the light and airy feel of a Scandi space.

Living rooms and bedrooms can benefit greatly from large windows that allow a lot of light in during the day.

Flooding a room with natural light is a great way to keep a space warm and open, which is particularly beneficial for the thermal mass of concrete floors.

Botanicals

An important step for any Scandinavian style home decoration is choosing the perfect range of plants and greenery.

Selecting house plants of a range of sizes and heights adds colour, texture and variety to the neutral backdrop.

Tropicals, succulents, creeping or leafy plants and greenery often work better than florals.

Outdoors

Another great opportunity for decorating an outdoor patio or garden area is combining natural stone with natural coloured concrete using exposed aggregate.

The Scandi style can be further embraced using wicker, canvas and wood-based furniture to set the perfect tone for a relaxing outdoor space.

Decorate with cushions, plants and greenery to make your garden or patio feel like a holiday destination.

For more information, tips, tricks and design inspiration, visit the other Geostone blogs or contact us today.