Top Tips & Advice From Our Interior Design Expert
At Scossa, our aim is to help enrich your home with stunning, modern furniture from a range of top brands from across Europe. With a showroom open and accessible from Queens Retail Park in Preston city centre, we also have a regular stream of projects.
Chris Kearns Interior Design is one of our partners, working from her design studio in the heart of Lytham to help clients from across the UK. She initially trained at the University of the Arts in London and had a successful career in business before transitioning into interior design.
Initially working alongside restaurant owners to renovate and redesign their businesses, she later moved to work with private clients on their homes, picking up several design awards such as Tatler’s Best Restaurants Awards.
Writing for Scossa, we asked her several question on the interior design world, current trends and how to maximize your living space.
Image of a project completed by Scossa for a customer house, featuring Calligaris Bess stools
What are the current trends in interior design?
Clients want to know that the expensive decisions they are making don’t have a short shelf-life: Fashion is ephemeral; new trends regularly drive out the old. Style however, endures.
There are some broad-brush trends that I think are here to stay and they reflect wider social changes. Many families don’t want to have a small separate kitchen and dining area. The kitchen has become the hub of the home – a central meeting space with dining, seating and cooking areas. It’s one of my favourite rooms to design as it really has to work functionally and aesthetically. Because kitchens aren’t shut away there is a movement to make the key pieces integrate more seamlessly with the rest of the furniture in the space so they don’t look too austere and even to hide away the appliances.
Image of Penta Glo installed to an open plan living space
Have we seen the end of grey interiors?
Yes and no. Greys or greiges are very calming in interiors but I do love colour and people are often afraid of how to introduce it. I often start with a neutral palette and then add a piece of art or a fabric for a cushion. The tones within that can then be pulled out within the room. I’m a fan of having a general colour theme running throughout a home. You can then intensify the saturation of colour in certain rooms to add variety. But having a palette of just a handful of colours makes the space flow seamlessly and I think adds to a sense of well-being.
Chris Kearns is an interior designer for many commercial and residential clients across the UK, including partnering with Scossa on many past projects. If you would like Chris’ advice on how to style our furniture in your home, please contact us.
