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Entice guests into the embrace of your living room with contrasting colour, textures, and styles.

The urge to combine and hybridise everything could be explained by our innate urge to seek out novel stimuli and construct unique experiences — and the same could be said of how interior styles tend to be expressed in this era. While adhering to the tenants of a particular school of aesthetics may appeal to individuals aiming for authenticity, the proponents of uniqueness instead seek to craft spaces without equal. In this decorative guide, we take a look at various ways of tastefully combining normally disparate colours, textures, and styles to create a unique living space that you can truly call your own.

Colour Play

An overt difference in luminosity and colour immediately captures attention. If you want to direct attention towards a piece of furniture that you are particularly fond of, the eye of an observer can be directed with a selection of upholstery in contrasting hues for prominence. Interior designers S/Lab 10 demonstrate the visually compelling effects of colour contrast by introducing a lone turquoise armchair against the pale wood background of the pictured living room, combining two opposing slices of the colour wheel to simultaneously comfort and attract the eye.

Textured Touch

While colour contrast is overt and clearly discernible from a distance, the application of contrasting textures is a subtler way of directing attention that invokes imaginings of tactile sensations and invites an exploratory touch. A completely uniform furniture arrangement assumes all people are the same, but some are drawn to plush and overstuffed seats as others are attracted by solid and sleek surfaces.

SQFT Space Design provides a range of seating options — in addition to an assortment of smooth and fuzzy surfaces — distributed around a monochromatic living room to attract and occupy different personalities at once.

Eclectic Mix

If you have grown comfortable with mixing and matching colours and textures, the next challenge to take on would be the blending of styles. Beyond the juxtaposition of colour and texture, the blending of contrasting decorative styles allows room for creative impulses and typically results in a unique arrangement — such as that presented in the pictured seating lounge. The interior designers, Living Space Creative Design, demonstrate an intriguingly eclectic décor that sits astride the past and the future, while combining contrasting colours, textures, and decorative features from the Eastern and Western hemispheres.