10 Items for Lovers of Modern Design

Sarah Tolle—Homify Canada Sarah Tolle—Homify Canada
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Everybody likes to surround themselves with unique objects that speak to their personal story—if you're a lover of modern, minimalist, and contemporary design, this idea book has some lovely ideas in store for you!

An interior designer will tell you that the characteristic features of modern design include clean lines, bold color contrasts, smooth and polished textures, and in furniture, ergonomic shapes. Minimalism runs along similar lines to many modern and contemporary designs, with a stronger focus on simplicity of form and quality of materials. From chairs to lights to the bathroom sink, there are ways to bring your love for all things modern and sleek into every room in your home.

Sofa

While some furniture gets used once a week, a sofa is often a piece of furniture that gets use every day. Therefore, a sofa is often seen as quite a financial investment. Choosing a sofa can also be an opportunity to carefully consider its subtler points, unique details, and the way it will match your artistic vision as well as nature of the whole interior of the living room. For a chic downtown apartment, a streamlined sofa bed is a solid, multi-functional choice. In a smaller room, a sweet love seat will do the trick without overwhelming the space. Whatever size or shape you choose, if you're looking for something that says modern, go for firmer styles, low backs, and solid bold colors.

Coffee Table

Perhaps the only piece of furniture in your living room that gets just as much use as the couch: the coffee table. Much more than a flat surface for supporting your coffee habit, a coffee table has almost endless potential when it comes to unique and innovative designs. Aside from the growing trend in up cycled and repurposed tables constructed of pallets, tires, glass bottles, construction equipment, and a number of other objects, many modern coffee table designs reject the traditional rectangular forms, opting for semi-circular, oblong, and triangular shapes.

In this living room design, Pracowania Projektowa Dragon Art's arrangement is quite notably modernist. The small table in his half-round form matches perfectly with the design in the carpet, creating the image of a wheel and circles. Well chosen cool colors that adopt a range of tones in shades of gray add a futuristic look to the collection.

Modern Chair

Unlike a desk or table, a chair's design must take into consideration the fact that, above all, it must be comfortable and relaxing to sit in. Therefore, a chair design is only perfect when you've already sat in it and felt it for yourself. However, even a quick glance at some of these modern chair designs can make you wish you could sink right into them, with their smooth surfaces and soft, streamlined, and gently curved lines. Modern chairs are making a go of it with hundreds of clever new ideas that take seat support to the next level—far from the flat wooden seat with a back and four legs, most modern designs feature seemingly impossible angles and polished materials. This chair looks like origami, chrome legs barely visible as their reflective shine acts as a mirror for their surroundings.

Modern Wooden Chair

Although it's a time-tested, friendly, and rustic material, wood is often used in minimalist design for its simple natural qualities and smooth, warm aesthetic. There's nothing that quite beats a solid  hardwood floor, and many modern designs use the high-quality appeal of wood to create pieces that tell a friendly, more natural story than polished chrome and brightly colored plastic. This can be seen perfectly in this example Fornitura chair making a play on the sixties. Uniform padding in a very fashionable graphite colour adds to its modernity, while the material remains timeless!

Even the Bathroom Sink

And now something for the bathroom. Modern design for wash basins in bathrooms more often than not presents a free-standing form, deviating from the practical small apartment solution sinks that feature a wash basin on top of a large storage cabinet. While these under-sink cabinets have their aesthetic advantages (they serve to hide plumbing fixtures behind closed doors), a free-standing sink's appeal lies in its simplicity, unburdened by a heavy box of drawers and doors underneath.

Light Fixtures

Although the term modern can evoke images of crisp white squares, straight lines, and sharp angles, modern also accommodates an entirely organic design current, that which lets naturally formed, familiar shapes speak for themselves. An example of this application of modern design is shown here these rounded wooden lighting fixtures, featuring shapes so smooth that they're just begging for you to reach out and touch them. Highly sensory and with a warm, cozy vibe, a cluster of these lamps would look very inviting when placed over a dinner table!

Lamp

The next lamp is an example of modern design, resembling a popular and familiar lampshade design by William Ravn'a. The image of the petals is reminiscent of the lotus flower, their materials sheer enough to transmit some amount of light. Together with the simple warm color of the cream, the light and shadows formed by this design create a dramatic and romantic atmosphere perfect for a living room or bedroom. In general, standing lamps are very simple features to add to a room, and the drama, style, and atmosphere that they bring can truly change a room. If you're looking for ways to upgrade without going all out, a statement lamp like this one should do the trick.

Coat Hanger

This modern coat hanger disguises itself as a pile of sticks in a stark black design that emanates energy and direction. A far cry from the traditional rounded wooden hooks or pegs, this coat hanger's crisp lines and sharp angles are worthy of a second glance as it sits in the corner of the room.

Fun Details

Part of the joy of good design is in having things that are just pure fun. That's not to say you need to seek out a fine art sculpture worth thousands—even small, practical items can become decorative and aesthetically pleasing with the right approach. For example, these beautiful bowls or ashtrays with their swirling colours bring fun and movement to the table. Where a simple white dish might be just as functional, small details like these colourful bowls are definitely more of a conversation starter!

Modern Pergola

Bring your flair for modern style outdoors with this state-of-the-art patio pergola! Most often constructed out of wooden beams and filled with grapevines, this modern version features a transparent roof with adjustable metal blinds—a perfect feature for anyone who wants their Sunday picnic to enjoy just the right amount of sunshine. 

For more modern style inspiration, have a look at these 4 Modern Houses With Floor Plans You Can Copy !

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