The Art of Maximalism How to Enhance Your Home Remodel With Personality
When you remodel your home, you use what you own and reconfigure it. You might also repurpose some items and bring a few things out of storage to use the art of maximalism in the remaking of your space.
Maximalism doesn’t mean throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a room or the house overall. It refers to a decorating style that pervades various décor themes. This colorful decor style offers collections that reveal the personality of the homeowner.
History of Maximalism
Although now its own décor theme, until modern times, maximalism existed only as an element of other décor themes, including French country, English cottage, and Victorian. In the 21st century, it came into its own and now serves a dual function as a part of other décor themes and on its own.
Maximalism in interior design consists of ornate details, textured fabrics, bold colors, and modern accessories. It opposes minimalism, which offers an austere space that shows no personal objects and uses neutral colors, such as white and beige.
Put Your Own Spin on Today’s Trends
Using the art of maximalism, you can infuse most decors with new interest. Although its name makes you think of including everything, it actually uses defined spaces with no haphazard placements. Like the Victorian era decors, it features collections gathered into one area of a room and organized into a specific area, such as on a bookshelf or in a bookcase.
It lends itself to every room. For example, adding a granite countertop to your kitchen doesn’t constitute maximalism by itself, although the texture of the granite provides a start. Placing a collection of antique cooking utensils or a matched set of modern small appliances in a corner of the counter adds an element of maximalism. Let’s consider the tenets of maximalism – color, layers, comfort, and individualistic style.
The Maximalist Color Palette
Forget the neutrals of minimalist designs. Maximize your love of bold, bright colors. Think in terms of cheerful yellows, fields of wildflowers, sky blues, and emerald greens. Choose one or two colors to build your color scheme. Green and orange, yellow and blue, yellow and green.
If you rent a home or apartment and your lease forbids you from painting the walls, you can still use this décor theme. Simply keep the walls white but surround them with color using furnishings, hanging a large tapestry to create a mural wall or contrast wall without painting, or hanging a group of artwork that covers the wall.
Layers and Textures Define the Maximized Space
The art of maximalism utilizes layers of design. Each layer uses texture and color. Apply this to walls, ceilings, flooring, and trim.
On the walls, use an exciting main color with a more subdued trim color. Match these to the furnishings or the furnishings to the wall color. Either way you go, keep it bright and happy. Use texture on the walls, such as combing, wallpapering, or layering decorative wallboard over drywall with wainscoting to define the space. Use ornate trim at the ceiling height, too, featuring crown molding in each room. Texture the ceilings, too, but skip the popcorn look of the 1960s and 1970s. Think combed paint or textured paper. Ceiling beams also add a layer.
Choose flooring with texture, such as hardwood planks or parquet flooring. Skip the smooth flooring like linoleum or vinyl tile. It adds no texture to the room. Pile on the throw rugs and room-sized carpets. Layer these carpets on top of each other to create an opulent spread.
Comfort or Hygge Required
The rigid furniture of mid-century modern does not fit the maximalist design scheme. Victorian, cottage, and country styles exhibit strong maximalism with their overstuffed furnishings. The Scandinavian concept of hygge figures prominently in maximalism, which places a premium on comfortable furnishings and a cozy space that encourages enjoyment of it. If a room makes you want to curl up on the couch with a good book, it probably embodies hygge.
Embrace Individualism
Maximalism has always encouraged individualism. Whether you display your family photographs or favorite artwork, you make the room your own with it. Each featured collection should communicate a part of your personality.
Since it opposes minimalism, maximalism focuses on book displays. It features bookcases or multiple bookshelves, and cabinets used for the display of books of all shapes and sizes.
Feel free to combine antique and modern pieces, expressing your own eclectic style. Perhaps what makes maximalism so popular today is its focus on individual style and personality. It embodies the idea that each person should enjoy their home, surrounded by comfort and the things they love.
Don’t Neglect Wall Art
Besides collections of books, sculptures, and kitchen accessories, maximalism also uses wall art. You can choose whatever wall art you like from any era. From impressionist to ultra-modern, it all works.
Consider screen printing some of your favorite photos or purchasing prints or original artwork that prominently features your trim color. Mural walls and contrast walls that feature floral wallpaper also work well.
Prioritize Your Comfort
Embodying the art of maximalism requires the home to feel comfortable in every way. To this end, hire HVAC services to revamp your heat and air system. Having the ventilation system cleaned results in improved air quality and fewer allergy attacks. Clean interior air can also help those with respiratory issues like asthma or COPD to breathe better.
Make it simpler for all family members or house residents to move about the home by widening doors and installing easy-open door hardware. Doing so improves the motility of individuals in wheelchairs or with diseases like arthritis that make it hard to turn door knobs.
Let’s not forget the importance of adopted family members with paws or fins. Maximalism takes care of them, too.
Cater to All of Your Family Members
Admittedly, decorating using the art of maximalism does put more furnishings and carpets in the path of pets. Invest in high-quality dog training so your canine won’t pee on your opulent interiors. Provide ample litter boxes for your felines and clean them daily. Cats love cleanliness and will urinate outside their litter box if it becomes too dirty.
Layer textured pet carpeting under the litter boxes. These colorful carpets use a waffle weave pattern that helps the cat dislodge litter from their paws. This not only helps the cat but the humans since you don’t find bits of litter all over the house.
Every pet has a favorite room. Design a space in your pets’ favorite room specifically for them using the tenets of maximalism. Provide a big, overstuffed bed or pillow pile, a collection of their favorite toys, and food and water bowls nearby. Doing so provides them with a hygge spot, too. Treat fish or reptiles to the same personal space by purchasing a larger-than-needed tank and decorating it with bright greenery, stone bridges, corals, and self-feeder bowls.
Use Your Home’s Layout to Its Full Potential
While you remodel, don’t forget a few minor renovation items that can make your home safer and more enjoyable like basement waterproofing and adding attic insulation. Regardless of the waterproofing method or type of attic insulation, you’ll improve your home’s air quality. Insulation reduces the need for running the HVAC by helping to control indoor temperatures. Basement waterproofing blocks moisture build up which can lead to the development of mold and mildew.
When you waterproof and insulate, you increase your usable space. Apply the art of maximalism in designing the finished rooms, adding storage that doubles as display areas. It only takes a comfy chair or couch to turn these now-finished rooms into break areas where family members can hide away to read a book or listen to music undisturbed.
Add Custom Details Wherever You Can
Don’t just apply the art of maximalism to the home’s interior. Call roofing companies for estimates on updating your roof. Asphalt shingles last about 15 years, so unless you re-roofed in the past few years, your home probably needs a new look. Instead of replacing it with the same type of shingles, improve the appearance and function of your home by using a longer-lasting, better-looking product like a copper roof or clay tiles. Cut your home’s utility bills remarkably by installing a solar roof. Any of these options blend form and function to maximize utility, but doing this doesn’t stop with your home’s roof.
Blend Form and Function to Maximize Utility
Every area of the home can benefit from the art of maximalism, including the home’s garage. Perhaps you hadn’t considered garage repair in your remodeling plans but a home’s garage can serve as so much more than a place to park a car or motorcycle.
When you use maximalism in garage re-design, you create areas of use. You might devote the back wall to a workshop area, displaying your tools on a pegboard. Turn one corner into a utility area for the washing machine and dryer if the home does not already have a separate utility room.
Hang bicycles on one wall, creating an artistic display that also provides function. Vary the sizes of the bicycles or hang them in different directions – some vertical, some horizontal – to add interest.
Incorporate Maximalism Into The Structure of Your Home
Besides updating the roof, also update the trim and framing of your home’s exterior with a custom framing kit. Doing so displays some of the complex details the art of maximalism adds to Victorian design. Consider adding a cupola, cornices, carved banisters, etc. Anything that complements the exterior structure and adds minute details that improve the curb appeal of the home.
Repair Vintage Fixtures to Preserve Your Home’s History
Older homes need extra care. If your house features a wood-burning or gas-log fireplace, hire a fireplace repair service to clean the chimney. Also, have them inspect the chimney and fireplace, then repair any issues. Pay special attention to areas with loose flashing or where the flashing got torn or blown off. Without that flashing to close the area between the roof and chimney, your home can develop a leak. Any rainfall can enter your home.
Apply the art of maximalism to the vintage fixtures of your home, such as the fireplace, mantel, and shutters. Shutters require repainting, and the slats can become broken or break out entirely. Have a contractor replace these so you can continue to protect your windows in inclement weather.
Your remodeling job doesn’t end until you plan for the future, and ensure that your home’s utilities won’t ruin all your hard work!
Make Your Life Easier by Planning for the Future
How might your home’s utilities ruin your home remodeling? Let’s count the ways.
Hire a plumber to check the water heater. This device requires annual maintenance and inspection. When a part goes bad on a water heater, it tends to explode. While it doesn’t typically spark a fire, the explosion inside the water heater spews water all over whatever room it’s in. It keeps spewing until you shut off the water at the main valve, so if you’re not home when it happens, water can permeate many rooms. But that doesn’t have to happen. Annual maintenance spots parts wear and let you replace them before they go bad. Your remodeled home remains safe and dry.
Another annual maintenance item, if your home features a cesspool, also called a septic tank. Each year, hire a cesspool pumping service to clean out this underground tank. If it becomes too full, human waste bubbles up through the ground into your yard. If your septic tank sits close to your home (and most do), you’ll literally have a yard full of liquid feces and urine in minutes. If not quickly addressed, the sewage can seep into your home’s basement or ground floor. Take care of your septic tank by having it pumped annually and this won’t occur.
Get your HVAC ducts cleaned annually. Your home’s ducts work hard to deliver clean air to every room and of the appropriate temperature for the season. Although each HVAC system features a filter that stops many particles, it can’t catch them all. These unfiltered particles collect in your vents and ducts until a professional cleans them. Most people notice they sneeze less after this service, which results in better air quality for your home.
Make the Most of Your Home Remodeling
It may seem like an immense list, but remodeling requires more than hanging a bit of art and rearranging the furniture. When you do it right, it results in a healthier, more comfortable home.