Houses with an industrial style: 4 tips to decorate your home.

It is often said that there is no arguing about taste, and this is particularly true of decorating styles. In order to find out about the origins of the industrial style, we have to travel to the United States, where back in the mid-1950s many warehouses in the Soho area of New York were starting to be refurbished, giving rise to large open spaces with no partitions and prominent ‘heavy’ materials such as ironwork or structural features such as girders.

It doesn’t matter if your house doesn’t have any of these features. Do you like industrial-style houses? Take note because today we are sharing 4 key tips to inspire you, especially if you have doubts as to how to decorate your house from scratch.

Metal and wood: the star materials of industrial-style houses

If there are 2 kinds of materials that are essential to providing that ‘factory’ touch you are seeking, then these are metal and wood. To these we could add steel and leather, creating a warmer atmosphere, but full of different tones and reminiscences.

Tip: Make the style of your home clear from the moment you step into your entrance hall by combining an old wooden item (preferably as dark as possible) with a mirror with a tarnished metal frame.

Colours: greys and earthen tones

The colour range for industrial-style houses is clear: play with greys and blacks, combining them with browns and earthen tones. You can use white to provide small pockets of light so as to avoid an overall effect that is too dark.

Recycled objects: reinvent them

Using vintage-style decorative features is certain to be a success. The best thing about this is that you can give a second lease of life to items you never thought you would want to keep. For example, why not use a spinning wheel to decorate a small corner and use it as a desk? Or how about rescuing an old suitcase or chest and using it as somewhere to keep magazines in the lounge?

Rescue old family relics; you are sure to find a way of turning them around so that they can give you that touch of industrial style you are seeking!

Tip: Your atmosphere will be 100% industrial if you have a metal lamp with no shade or a spot light like the ones they use when filming. 

Play with textures

In order to get a more ‘rough’ atmosphere that you find in large factories, here is a more adventurous idea: a brick wall. A perfect location would be for example the main wall in the lounge (the one the furniture is oriented towards), or behind the bed, so as to make it stand out. If you think this is too ‘daring’, a simpler option, but just as effective, would be to leave a wall ‘bare’, as if it were unfinished, which you can do by way of a ‘polished cement’ effect.

Tip: You are never looking for perfection in polished finishes, ideally you want the material used to look timeworn, even when it is newly-built.

Do you like industrial-style houses? Are you willing to try out this kind of decoration for your home? If you know any more tricks, we would love to hear them!