Loft style interior
A small excursion into history will help to better understand the loft. This style has practically not undergone any changes over the years.
Loft interior for a standard loggia
The history of the loft - how it all began
In the first half of the 20th century, New York industrialists, in order not to go broke completely, decided to lease their warehouses, factories, and plants. The low price, remoteness from the city center, uninhabited premises attracted only ever-poor artists and students.
They did not strive for comfort and fundamental changes around them. Furniture items, decor successfully coexisted with concrete, brick, uncovered utilities.
However, after a couple of decades, an unusual solution attracted the attention of wealthy citizens around the world. They began to implement loft design projects in conventional houses and apartments
Loft in the decoration of the balcony
If you are not indifferent to such an original idea, be guided by the following decoration recommendations when decorating a balcony:
- Walls: aged concrete pavement with small (!) Chips and cracks, bricks, carelessly applied paint and plaster. The brick wall is the hallmark of the loft, but it should not be overused. Decorate them with only one wall, making an accent. It is there that you can put a sofa, hang a shelf of pipes or a bright poster.
- Floor: planks or ceramic tiles with an aged effect.
- Ceiling: plaster, paint. The decor will be metal or wooden beams. They should not be too massive, so as not to visually make the balcony ceiling lower.
Loft-style brick walls and dark window frames
Let the shades of brown and natural wood, black, gray, terracotta prevail in the palette. If the balcony is poorly lit or has a very small area, take white as a basis. It will visually increase the space. Don't forget about 2-3 bright objects as accents.
For a loft-style balcony, choose only the most necessary pieces of furniture. For sleeping place, resting places - a two-seater leather sofa or a recliner on casters, a mattress with a leather hinged headboard. For the study and as storage places - racks, shelves made of round pipes, a table made of natural wood, painted wooden boxes on wheels.
Loft shelving option
Accessories are usually few and far between. These are rough "factory" lamps and lamps, posters.
Lamps in style loft boggle the imagination
Varieties
An open balcony will be very relevant where the climate allows you to spend a lot of time outdoors. It has such a feature as seasonality. In rain or strong wind, it should be possible to quickly bring furniture, a table, pillows and blankets inside the apartment. Accordingly, it is better to choose furniture for an unglazed balcony light, mobile or folding, so that carrying things does not require much physical effort. Items must be resistant do not be afraid of moisture and sun rays.
Closed balconies and loggias are divided into two categories:
"Cold" glazing
It is used if the balcony is not planned to be equipped for an additional functional room, but only moisture and dust protection is required. For this, swing-open sashes, various designs on a metal-plastic profile are used. Such stained-glass balconies look very impressive and give an excellent view of the city, especially on the upper floors.
On glazed balconies, to bring originality, it is possible to apply such techniques as: glass tinting, stained glass, engraving or photo printing.Such elements are allowed to be used both in fragments and over the entire surface of the protective cloth.
"Warm" glazing
For nemadju up to 9 sq.m. plastic double-glazed windows are best suited, they provide the best noise and heat insulation. In addition, the practice of removing double-glazed windows outside the fence by a few centimeters is used, which makes it possible to equip a sufficiently spacious window sill - a pleasant and functional bonus for the owners.
You should not save on materials and payment for the services of socialists to isolate the balcony / loggia. Poorly done work will subsequently cause damage to balcony furniture, additional time and money will be required to eliminate shortcomings or even to completely rework the work.
For maximum heat retention on the balcony during the cold season, it is necessary to insulate the floor, walls and ceiling. Most often, foam, expanded polystyrene and mineral wool are used for this. Heaters are laid only after the complete elimination and treatment of all cracks and cracks.
Separately, it should be said about corner balconies and loggias with a non-standard configuration, with creases and narrowed corners.
Corner balconies, as it were, flow around the house from two sides. Their undoubted advantage is the relatively large area, so the functionality of the additional room should be well thought out. Fully glazed such a balcony, you can not only create a small recreation room, study or garden, but also install a sufficient number of cabinets and shelves for storing various little things.
Balconies and loggias with creases, which are structurally narrowed in one or a pair of corners, also have their own decoration tricks. It is good to beat such seemingly non-functional narrow corners of the room by installing vases with flowers or climbing plants there. Hanging shelves or interesting decorative elements will look good in such creases.
Provence style balcony decoration
Provence is a style that has long inspired, inspires and will inspire creative people to create paintings, books, songs, music, poetry and much more. This style brings peace and tranquility to the mind of any person on the Provence loggia.
The color scheme of this style is based on soothing light bedding tones. Furniture designed in calm colors should be made from natural materials. The style allows drawing in the form of patterns on a sofa or armchair, which you can place on the loggia.
The color scheme is explained by the name Provence itself. This is a French city, which is famous for its hot sun, thanks to which all the bright details of the interiors fade over time and become smoothed, bed-like.
This is the reason for the absence of sharp color transitions in the interior and minor contrasting details, decorated in the Provence style. If it was once conceived in this province to furnish apartments in bright colors, then the merciless rays of the sun quickly corrected all shades to bed tones.
Creation of an office on the balcony
Before realizing the dream of creating any room on the loggia, you should go through a number of certain important points, these are glazing, insulation and decoration. After all these stages have been passed, you can proceed to the very embodiment of the idea.
If you decide to make a study on the balcony, then, first of all, it is worth evaluating the territorial possibilities of the loggia. For example, if the balcony has a minimum size, then the furniture will need to be purchased accordingly. If the dimensions allow, then apart from the table and chair, you can also arrange a sofa as a place for additional rest.
The convenient location of the table in most cases is to the right or left of the entrance to the balcony, that is, to the side of the window. In any case, using a balcony for an office is convenient, since the lighting will always be sufficient.But if you are going to work in the evenings, then the lamps will still be needed, you can install the floor lamp on the table. It is convenient to place shelves and shelves for documents on top of the table. The computer chair will also fit perfectly into the interior.
The advantages of this idea are that with the minimum size of the balcony in width, you can pick up a table of the same width, which will have shelves at the bottom for the greatest capacity.
According to the color scheme for the office, light tones are an excellent combination. walls and floors, and dark shades of furniture.
Balcony arrangement - living corner decoration
For complete harmony, there may not be enough plants on the balcony. Balcony flowers can be grown in boxes suspended from a balustrade or placed on the floor, as well as in special containers. The greenery will create a relaxing atmosphere. The most popular flowers are geraniums. Garden shops or supermarkets have a huge selection. Pelargonium is resistant to drought, gusts of wind, very easy to grow. If we need a cascade of flowers, then choose plants for balconies with hanging shoots, for example:
- surfinia;
- lobelia;
- petunias;
- bacopa;
- fuchsia.
The varieties of these balcony flowers with hanging buds are very impressive, they have beautiful shapes, but they require systematic watering. They can be planted individually in hanging pots, or grown in boxes of several types.
How to finish correctly
Decorating a loft bathroom doesn't have to be trivial. Conventional materials can be easily combined with trendy ones.
Ceiling
Minimal processing of the ceiling is a distinctive design feature. It should be high and have a pristine appearance - raw concrete, brick, unpainted wood. The decoration can be massive beams, on which the corresponding LED lighting is installed.
Floor
As an option for decorating floors, use:
- wooden or imitating them;
- stone-style tiles or staggered tiles of light and dark elements;
- concrete screed.
Walls
It is not necessary to make all the walls of the bathroom brick. One or even a part of it is quite enough. A rectangular tile of a contrasting color or mosaic is well echoed with brickwork.
It is easy to accentuate the wall with wood or by separating the toilet area with glass blocks. To enliven the design, graffiti is used on the floor or walls.
Living room combined with a loft-style balcony
When combining a balcony and a loft-style living room, you will have to observe the unity of direction. This does not mean that there will be one brick and hanging bundles of wires around, but some rules will have to be followed, otherwise the loft runs the risk of becoming glossy.
How to organize the combined space of the living room and balcony
Walls. There can be only one front wall in a brick living room, and it is not necessary to make real masonry, which will “eat up” the space. Today there is an opportunity to find wallpaper with a similar pattern, order a drawing from designers, depict a brick yourself, or use imitation overlays. The rest of the areas can be made monochromatic for painting or in the form of decorative plaster.
Cozy outdoor seating area adjacent to the living room
Floor. Of course, raw concrete is the basis of the first loft, but we do not live in a cave, and therefore it can be safely changed to laminate, large tiles, aged parquet, ordinary painted or unpainted, slightly creaking floorboards. The latter create the right atmosphere with an unobtrusive sound.
Window. Plastic in such an interior will look like a flying saucer in the Middle Ages, and therefore, no matter how much we want to do everything quickly and functionally, we will have to sacrifice something.
Attic floor with panoramic wooden windows
And the key point - no cute curtains and pretentious curtains, perhaps no curtains at all! Even blinds and roman!
Furniture.Since the space of the living room and the loggia is combined with us, you can use the zoning technique. Glass or wooden partitions-racks with cells, through which the space will shine through, are quite appropriate. Metal pipe structures can also be used as spacers. The type of furniture should be taken from high-tech or modern directions, or very old retro, and it should not be florid or pretentious - it is worth paying tribute to the simplicity of forms, and its quantity should be minimal.
Designers like to allocate the area of the former balcony for the work sector; a multi-tiered computer table and a voluminous computer chair with metal matte details look original there.
A loft-style balcony is not only an ideal additional bachelor's abode, suitable for spending the night with cheerful friends and noisy parties. This is a breath of freedom and even a way of life for a creative person. An extensive space, a minimum of furniture, own works as a pronounced individuality - this atmosphere will serve a good service to a young family with children who, from an early age, will not see brilliant ideas around and develop creative thinking, bypassing false complexes.
What is Loft Style?
Loft is a modern and widely popular style, which appeared not so long ago and its foundations are actively sharpened for the use of the most natural materials in the interior and interior design.
Thus, it is worth noting the fact that naturalness and the principles of minimalism allow you to create amazing solutions, which are presented in more detail in the photographs for this article.
The bedroom in the Loft style is the most diverse, while saturating each room with unique elements that give and cause only coziness and reliability in the owner.
An excellent option for one-room apartments is a combination of several zones together, for example, beautiful bedrooms in the Loft style. Since, precisely due to the absence of any partitions, it gives the room a larger scale than it actually is.
Balcony decoration with stone
Stone is a very durable natural material that blends well with the environment, is timeless and elegant. Unfortunately, it is heavy, requires impregnation at least once a year, is quite expensive, and gets very hot in summer. As with wood, not all types of stone are suitable for outdoor use. The safest way is to mount granite on balconies. Sandstone, travertine and alabaster will be worse as they can be destroyed by weathering.
The stone intended for the balcony is in the form of finished tiles or larger pieces, made to measure. It does not need to be polished because it will be very slippery, so it is advisable to use rough surfaces. An unpolished stone has a less intense color, but special preparations can be used to deepen the color. It is not necessary to impregnate granite, although after such processing it will be less dirty. In your daily care, do not overdo it with detergents, it is best to rinse the floor with cool water. If the stone is heavily contaminated, then every few years it is necessary to carry out crystallization treatment, that is, machine cleaning, which is usually combined with the subsequent impregnation of the surface.
The process of finishing the balcony with stone
Stone slabs are laid on cement mortar less and less, although this is a cheaper method, more often glue is used. As with ceramic tiles, it is applied both to the bottom of the panel and to the substrate. Flexible joint masses with added silicone are used for cementation. The edge of the balcony can be finished with a stone quarter or semi-axle. If you decide to cut the tiles, you can polish the edges - this is a very popular solution: stone elements are usually 10-20 mm thick.If you put the stone on glue, the floor will be 20-40 mm thick, depending on whether the concrete foundation is flat, and if on cement mortar it will be 40-50 mm thick. Sizes that exist in stone tiles: 45 x 45, 30 x 60, 40 x 60 cm or irregularly shaped elements.
Tips for decorating a small kitchenette
The loft style is used to decorate a large area of space. The main thing for this design direction is to create the illusion of an industrial space. True, even a small room can be decorated in a loft style, if you make a small redevelopment and use light colors and compact, small-sized furniture in the design.
Minimalism
For the direction of the loft, the presence of empty space near the walls is important. Small kitchen decorated in this style, it is not recommended to overload with furniture or decorative elements
Instead of a massive kitchen set, compact drawers (hanging or floor-standing) are used.
Shelves and crockery holders can be hung on the wall. Built-in appliances can be located in the lower drawers. The interior should have a lot of metal, chrome parts and glass.
Bright hues
It is recommended to decorate a small room in light colors. Brickwork can be white or gray. It is better to paint the ceiling with snow-white water-based paint. It is recommended to use gray, light brown laminate or tiles for the floor. Furniture is selected in light shades, with glossy doors.
Straight or L-shaped headset
It is better to arrange furniture in a narrow room along one of the walls or in an L-shape. A table with chairs can be placed near the window. In a small kitchen hanging boxes and shelves are required. The free wall can be decorated with brickwork with a dial or posters, photographs, wallpaper.
Compact dining area
It is advisable to delimit the recreation area from the working one. This can be done using a floor covering of different colors, a separate rug, lighting. The table can be wooden or glass, facing the window. In a small kitchen, you can put or hang a transforming table from the wall, which can be expanded to its full length only during lunch.
Redevelopment
In a small kitchen, it is advisable to redevelop, remove one of the walls, combine the kitchen with the living room or bedroom. Instead of a wall for zoning a room, you can use a bar counter, a rack, a sofa, a glass block partition.
Ideas for decoration
The options for loft-style decoration can be:
- combination of toilet and bath;
- use of vintage plumbing;
- walls with rough plaster and exposed brickwork;
- use of non-standard accessories;
- rare furniture;
- the use of modern chrome-plated elements and glass items.
Natural untreated surface
The loft style assumes the maximum approximation of the appearance of the bathtub to the industrial premises. If there is a wall in the room, it is not covered with ceramic tiles, not painted, but only put in order. It must remain in its natural form. In the absence of an unplastered wall, finishing materials are selected and its imitation is created.
After processing with a special spray, the wall is protected from getting wet and mildew. Against the background of untreated surfaces, porcelain sanitary ware looks stylish and expensive. Unmasked plumbing and sewer pipes accentuate the casual style.
Brickwork
A brick wall is most often used when creating a loft-style interior. In private houses, it is not initially plastered, but only the seams between the bricks are carefully sealed. In an apartment building, they create it on purpose using tiles or artificial stone.
The contrast between ordinary brick and modern finishes is interesting. So, for zoning, small partitions made of glass, polycarbonate are used. The interior is translucent, light, voluminous.
Concrete surfaces
In a loft-style bathroom, concrete is used not only on the walls, but also on the floor. The material is inexpensive, practical, it is not difficult to cover surfaces with it, but it is imperative to treat them with a moisture-resistant solution. Most often, concrete surfaces are not painted, retaining their color and texture, but sometimes designers make exceptions, giving them neutral colors and shades.
An untreated concrete wall is left as the only element, finishing with other conventional materials. They also do the same with the floor surface, especially since the concrete crumbles under the weight of plumbing and furniture, and the tile will not allow the integrity of the material to be violated.
Using wood
The use of wood in a loft-style bathtub will add softness and home comfort to it. The material is used to decorate doors, window frames, and mirror frames. Wood with minimal processing looks stylish as a countertop or sink stand. Highly patterned wood floors support the modern design and interior of the bathroom.
Ceramic tile
It is easy to maintain order in the bathroom, finished with ceramic tiles, any cleaning agents can be used. For the loft style, tiles are selected with their own characteristic features:
- minimalistic coloring;
- imitation of brick, metal, stone or concrete.
The choice of dark shades of bricks in the ceramic drawing is completely optional. Light gray tones contribute to the visual expansion of the space. The same rule applies to simulating metal or concrete.
