Hygge Design

Maximalism: the style where everything goes.

When we talk about maximalism in design and maximalist furniture, we are referring to a style characterized by an abundance of decorations, patterns, colours, fabrics, art objects and ornaments, never arranged in a random and confusing way, but always looking for a harmony as a whole.

“Less is more” or “more is more”?

Is the time of minimalism over? Looking at the latest trends in design and fashion, what seemed to be the final blow to the excesses of the 80s would seem to have come to an end to leave room for maximalism.
If minimalism uses the refinement of materials and the poetry of geometry related to objects, maximalism is instead hedonistic and bohemian in its message.

The full freedom of interpretation of the space contrasts with the discipline. It is the moment of saturation of spaces with shapes and colors. Clean lines, aseptic spaces and a celebration of absence are a faded memory of a radical world now in direct collision with the brazen eclecticism of this late decade. The minimal Japanese and Scandinavian style have definitely had their day: the rarefied atmospheres, the impalpable fabrics in the name of pastel colors and the pure and sincere furniture in their simplicity now appear so far from appearing almost vintage.

In recent years, more than a new style, a new sentiment has made its way: the desire to personalize spaces has resulted in eclecticism understood as the use of shapes and colors far from the formal stereotypes of minimalism in low-cost production.

New textures, floral and animalier patterns, composite materials and decidedly audacious shapes have given rise in the last period to a renewed impetus towards graphic and architectural research, contrasting, in interior projects, with what is professed by the contemporary “academic” establishment. Seriousness is giving way to joy. This does not mean that the links with the cultures that inspired the minimalist style in interior architecture are abandoned tout court: it means that we now tend to consider them as a whole without dividing them in order to abstract only the components useful for a line of thought .

Maximalism consists precisely in fully embracing every form of culture to fearlessly mix different styles and eras; in superimposing color schemes and designs that appear to be antithetical to each other.

With maximalism it is important to tell a story that is the common theme of the entire interior design: obviously it is not enough to mix colors and objects at random but it is necessary to organize them in a disorder dictated by one’s personality and “joie de vivre”.

The typical maximalist-style home is an environment where the strength of creativity explodes in extreme combinations: every space is filled without false modesty with objects of all sorts. Different eras coexist in a sort of exaltation of the strength of interior design; the wallpaper, dominating the vertical scores, becomes the bearer of further shapes and colors. However, the maximalist house is a meditated house, not improvised, but designed and built over time.

If you liked my blog post “Maximalism in Interior Design” have also a look at Decorating with Burgundy Red