It’s tempting to think about the inside and outside of your home as two separate and distinct areas for decoration. However, if you learn how to complement interior decorating with the outdoors, you’ll find that guests feel more at ease in all areas of your home, and that making design decisions becomes easier as you have an overarching theme to fall back on.
The Importance Of Flow
Maintaining a flow between different areas of your home is important because it helps make sense of your house for your visitors. While you don’t have to decorate all rooms and spaces in exactly the same way, a common theme makes more visual sense, especially if you’re planning on selling in the near future. It also helps to cut down on your decision making process as you’re not having to reinvent the wheel for every single room and space. Linking your indoor and outdoor spaces will also make it feel like your garden is an extension of your home, and vice versa.
Adding a Pergola For Flow
Having an outside structure helps to maintain the flow between your interior and exterior design spaces as it gives you a canvas to work on in the same way that your walls and floor give you space to work on inside. A pergola is the perfect structure as you can build it anywhere and it can be made in a wide variety of materials and sizes to create a good flow between inside and outside. Some tips to help coordinate your pergola space with your interior decorating include:
- Take cues from nature – if you’ve build your pergola on your deck or patio right outside your home, only a door will separate your inside living spaces from your outdoor entertaining areas. To provide some continuity, you should look around the rest of your yard for inspiration. For example, you could find plants that grow in another part of the yard and bring a potted sample into the house as well as hanging them from the pergola beams. You could also find tree prints for your cushions and match these designs with artwork on the walls inside.
- Match textures – a typical pergola is made with strong wooden beams, so a great way to complement this texture is to find wooden pieces of the same texture for your inside. This could be as simple as wooden frames for your artwork to reframing the door that leads outside in the same type and style of wood as your pergola. The visual effect of the matching textures will be pleasing to the eye and make an instant connection between the two spaces.
- Find a unifying accent colour – finally, you should identify a solid colour to use in both your pergola decorations and your inside accents. This doesn’t have to be as drastic as a full collar feature wall, but could be a set of cushions that you divide between the two spaces, or dishware in the same design throughout your home.
Your pergola will stand out as the statement piece in your garden given its size, so you need to make sure that you’re decorating it with intent. Your visitor’s eye will be drawn to it, so don’t be afraid of spending additional time and money to make it the jewel in the crown of your garden.
Getting Inspiration
If you’re lucky, you might be one of these super creative people who can look at their indoor and outdoor spaces and be flooded with ideas. However, for most people, the search for inspiration will start online by looking at examples of what others have done with a similar space. If you have the money to do so, it’s definitely worth investing in the time and knowledge of a professional decorator who will not only be able to create a master decoration plan with you but will also be able to help you source furniture and artwork to match your theme.
Creating Flow With Style
The key for creating a flow throughout your indoor and outdoor spaces is to plan ahead and pick a style that will last all year long. It can be tempting to think about matching your interior decorating with the outdoors in accordance with the season, but you’ll find it easier to shoot for a timeless style that blends both spaces together. Popular style examples that complement interior decorating with the the outdoors include:
- Floral prints – the most obvious way to blend the inside and outside aspects of your home is to find the unifying theme: plants. The current trend of keeping exotic houseplants inside means that you’ll always be able to find matching colours and textures for your soft furnishings. You can also pick out artwork and pictures of specific flowers, ranging from watercolour images to scientific classification posters, that will help transition the eye and mind as you move from inside to outside.
- Coastal palettes – you can also take inspiration from other places where boundaries meet and blur, such as the beach. The blend between water and land brings out some interesting contrasts, and you can use this coastal theme as a way to decorate. This gives you a clearly defined colour scheme of whites, cool blues and sand yellows, as well as lots of decorative items like shells, anchors and sailboats.
- Modern materials – one final way to link your interior decorating with the outdoors is to pick a separate theme for both spaces that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with either, but one that can fit with both spaces. A modernistic approach with chrome and glass accents is a perfect blended theme as you can find matched or linked pieces of furniture that will sit beautifully both inside and outside. Make sure your outdoor furniture is comfy for lounging around on and easy to keep care of; putting it under your pergola is a great way of protecting it from the elements.
Once you have your theme worked out, you can think about which elements will work best inside and out and then begin your harmonious decorating project.
