Contemporary with a Classical Twist - Interior Design Guide

Torn between your love of classical architecture and sleek modernity? Give this contemporary style with a classical twist a try, combining the best of both worlds into a stunning new interior design look for your living room. The balance between old and new styles in this design creates a style perfect for history buffs and those looking for a more unique living room aesthetic. This look emphasizes an understated style and revitalizes an antiquated look with modern elements.

 

1. Choosing the Right Colors

For the classical contemporary style, use dark neutral colors like beige, stormy gray, and chestnut shades to evoke the sense of time. For accents, choose muted colors like maroon, dark emerald green, or eggplant purple. Remember to choose multiple colors for your accents to keep things interesting, whether complementary or analogous.

 

Tips:

• Walls: For this style, you have a variety of wall options available, ranging from a painted wall to stone. Remember to choose muted colors, unless using an accent wall. If you're feeling adventurous, try out some wallpaper with a tasteful and simple pattern that is not too bold or overwhelming.
• Floors: Wood paneled floors in an unobtrusive shade of medium brown or simple stone floors are best for this design. 
• Accents: To provide color accents, use vases, cushions, throws, plants, flowers, and paintings placed strategically throughout the room. Remember that not every accent has to be the same color - in fact, it's best to have around three different accent colors - but not so many that the design looks incoherent.

 

2. Choosing the Right Patterns and Textures

This style prefers to use a more modern mixture of subtler, less elaborate patterns but combines this simplicity with the richly detailed textures of history.

 

Suggestions:

• Patterns: In general, patterns are not necessary for this style, but simple stripes or simple curving designs can add a little extra detail. If including a more intricate pattern, go for subtler, more neutral colors so that it does not overwhelm the design.
• Textures: Using rough textures tastefully, for example through rough hewn stone accent walls or embellishments in the ceiling crown molding, can add a historical slant to your living room. The raw, unfinished look recalls ancient times and is an understated, but essential feature of your contemporary classic style. 

 

3. Choosing the Right Furniture

Every living room needs furniture, and the classical-contemporary living room is no exception. Meant for small to medium-large sized living rooms, this style could include anything from a versatile small space sofa bed to a sprawling sectional. To keep your design coherent, check out the tips on choosing furniture below.

Tips:

• Design: Choose furniture with a simple, classic design. For a more old-fashioned feel, buttoned or otherwise embellished furniture is also good. Basically any design (whether a more blocky, rectangular modern feel or a balance of curves and straight lines) will work given the flexibility of this style.
• Materials: Furniture in fairly muted colors of fabric or leather is perfect for this look while wood frames would also hold true to the historical slant.
• Tables: A low coffee table is ideal for this design. Beyond its practical functionality, coffee tables and side tables can also be meant as decoration, with a historical centerpiece – like a bouquet of dried flowers.
• Classical Shelves: Swirling and elaborate wrought iron frames supporting a sleek white shelf panel are perfect additions to recall the Romans and the Greeks. Other options include a pillar shelf, in which the shelf planks straddle two intricately carved white Tuscan style pillars.

 

4. Choose the Right Accessories

As always, the accessories can make or break your living room design, so below, we have listed several great accessories to decorate your classical-contemporary space.

Suggestions:

• Ivy: There's nothing like ivy, whether real or (probably) plastic, to jazz up your contemporary classical living room. Associated with crumbling castles and secret gardens, this decor item will be a unique twist on the historical theme.
• Potted Plants: Potted plants are a great, portable decor item which can be easily moved and rearranged to change up the look. A white porcelain pot with some decoration reminiscent of classical pillars can tie the look together. These can make for natural pops of color within your living room. Miniature, flowering plants like cyclamen or African violets are a great choice. Alternatively, use plants with colorful leaves like poinsettia.
• Cushions: Shiny, satin cushions in a warm neutral color from tan to sepia fit the overall color scheme and add a glittery accent to your living room. Alternatively, use cushions in colors that match your pictures or in other accent colors.
• Curtains: Heavier, thicker curtains go well with this style given the dim lighting typically preferred, but most solid color curtains should work.
• Rugs: Rugs are a welcome addition to the classical contemporary style. Choose complex patterns with a mixture of geometric shapes and curving lines for a low-contrast floor covering.

 

5. Add Elements of History

For the classical contemporary style, historical items are essential! While we focused especially on the Classical Age in Western Europe (Greeks and Romans), Renaissance and vintage items from any other time period or place would be a great addition to the rich historical details of this design!

Options:

• Marble busts or statues: Imitation statues mimicking the time period or even true artifacts easily find themselves blending in with the style of your living room. These pieces are a wonderful display which instantly recall Renaissance and the classical times.
• Model ships or buildings: Adding model ships or models of historical buildings is a great way to combine your personal hobby with your living room design! These marvelously intricate miniature models add a touch of authenticity.
• Pictures: Using anything from simple modern frames to more ornate, old fashioned metal frames, hang paintings and photographs of historical scenes, people, or objects. This will add another dimension to your living room. Choose paintings that are generally muted with just a few accent colors. Pair these with photos of your favorite memories for a personal touch.
• Antique machines and inventions: Although the classical contemporary style focuses on the distant past, a few artifacts from the more recent past century would hardly be amiss! Feel free to display your old vinyl music players, gramophones, and other collectibles.

 

6. Choose the Right Lighting

For the classical-contemporary style, lighting normally comes from internal sources. You can use a mixture of cool and warm toned lighting or take your pick of either type of color, depending on the look you are going for. Cool lighting may seem sterile or cold, so warm lighting is better suited for a more cozy look.

Options:

• Recessed wall lighting: Placing lighting strips behind an accent wall adds a modern touch and brightens up your living room. Recessed lighting is important to achieving a more dramatic flair in this style.
• Lamps: Anything from a small shelf-cubicle sized lamp to a standing table lamp is a wonderful way to light up your living room. Go for porcelain based lamps with designs reminiscent of the Classical Era.
• Chandeliers: While this style is not overly preoccupied with luxury, there's no denying that an old-fashioned, glittering chandelier will remind you instantly of historical eras.

Conclusion

All in all, this new design style is more than just a compromise between a classical, vintage theme and sleek modern styles, but a beautiful and eclectic style of its own. Bringing together the best of both worlds, the classical contemporary interior design style mixes historical details, classical themed objects, and vintage decor with the modern focus on refined, straight lines and recessed lighting to spotlight your favorite artifacts. Creating a dramatic ambience, this timeless design effortlessly combines the old with the new to make a stunning living room. 

Ready to transform your living room into a perfect mix of the classical era and modernity? Check out a luxury sofa bed in top quality fabric from sofabedstore.com. For more interior design tips and inspiration, check out our YouTube channel where we showcase different living room transformations every two weeks using the same sofa bed from sofabedstore.com.