Loft style: about the features and important stages of working with this design

The candid and bold loft style is hard to confuse with any other interior design. it is immediately recognizable among the many concepts of decorating your own apartment or house. The room is decorated in a loft style, at first glance, will resemble an abandoned factory or a workshop. If you have such a non-standard "platform" for creativity, then feel free to choose the ideas of this design to decorate it.

But this way you can immediately get lost in the variety of elements that create a loft interior. No matter how simple it may seem, it also requires scrupulousness and attention to detail.

How did we learn about such a style as a loft?

The origin of this design dates back to the 40-50s of the 20th century. At that time, land prices in America began to rise, and therefore, gradually, all the owners of industries and various crafts moved their capacity outside the city or its environs.

Many factory and factory premises, in simple words, began to be empty. They have lost their value and direction. That is why the owners tried to sell them at least for some unfortunate means. But there were also more resourceful businessmen.

Some began to rent such places for low-income citizens. After all, who wants to live in a hangar room with bare brick walls? When all sorts of wires and pipes from the necessary communications are visible around. The new tenants and owners hurried to arrange their "apartments" and "houses" anyway. Kitchen, living room, bedroom - rooms that seem to have merged together. After all, what was once a factory and where life prevailed, did not have any partitions and additional walls inside the room.

No matter how hard you try, the old elements still reminded of the true purpose of the buildings. And in combination with the new "breath", such as home furniture, these homes looked quite interesting and original.

New York fashionistas quickly saw something new and unique in this and rushed to populate the former workshops and premises after the warehouses.

Special fans of loft design

Artists, musicians and artists with all the imagination that was inherent in them lived in a large space, where there is no partition or additional wall. They did not touch the wooden trusses and beams under the ceiling. The new apartment owners did not even want to cut the sewer pipes from the utilities, and the huge factory windows were left without decorations in the form of curtains or tulle.

Artists saw in this a free, ill-considered style that has its own unique charm. In such houses, they felt free and independent of obsessive classics and rules in the arrangement of their cozy home.

Tribeca Loft, Location: New York NY, Architect: Andrew Franz Architect

The loft-style design has spread beyond America

After America, the crisis has caught up with European countries. As in the United States, large factories and enterprises gradually moved from the city center to the outskirts. But in Europe it was immediately thought to make them apartments and houses for ordinary city dwellers.

The American idea of converting factories and factories for housing has captured its fans on the European continent. Here the loft began to develop as a style. People gradually converted ordinary houses into industrial ones. Yes, some did not even need to buy a whole room of any workshop. Residents saw the loft all around and without reference to whether the place was once a factory.

Already on a permanent basis, the loft was established when the rich and wealthy, as well as the aristocratic elite built homes and houses from scratch. It was no longer necessary to look for an abandoned factory, because people understood the principle and began to create themselves.

The new buildings were spacious, with grand windows and no walls. Instead of hiding the communications and the pipe, they were taken outside. Even if the new owners could build them into the wall, they just didn't want to.

Minimalism in combination with the characteristic rough features of the room itself laid the foundations of the "base" of the loft.

The main features of the loft design and its characteristics

The loft-style design is characterized not only by the presence of a large room with expressive brick walls. It also requires the right color palette, a plan for the placement of furniture, special decoration and wall decoration.

In order to ensure a successful project in the industrial style, you should follow the following principles in its planning and implementation:

The layout of the room should be open, without walls and fenced rooms. This rule applies not only to the kitchen and living room, but also the bedroom, including.
The windows are not hidden behind curtains and tulle. They must remain open. It's time to break your own limits and stereotypes imposed by society - the windows are not always covered with fabric.
No wallpaper and plastic walls. Most often, the highlight of the style is the "bare" walls decorated with real or artificial unpainted brick. Concrete surface without treatment or painted white is allowed. It is very rare to find a covering from sheets of metal or plywood.
The floor of a proper loft-style dwelling should usually be concrete. But it is not always comfortable, or rather "warm". Therefore, designers allow the presence of masonry, parquet or laminate.
Loft-style design is best used in rooms with high ceilings. After all, all communications, real or false beams, communication wires and pipes will be placed outside. Therefore, you will need enough space for this. It will be a little harder to implement such things in standard apartments.
Lighting in the loft-style rooms is designed in groups. To do this, choose modern models of lamps that could be successfully combined with each other or complement each other.
The premises of the workshops and factories were quite cold. That is why the new owners of such homes heated them with fireplaces, various open stoves. Such, at first glance, rude and outdated elements continue to fit well into the loft style.
Since there is a lot of space, and the bedroom is not very convenient to arrange on the same level with the kitchen, it was given a separate place. The owners of the apartments are building an improvised 2nd floor for this purpose, on which they have arranged a berth.
Particular attention is now paid to the stairs leading to this "room". Spiral or stationary stairs give an interesting mood to the whole room.
If we talk about the color scheme, then here it is fixed. 2-3 harmonious colors. They can vary depending on the country: somewhere these shades will be warmer, and somewhere colder.
Furniture in such an interior is typical either for the epochs of that time, or is based on its own versatility. Here it already depends on the preferences of the owner: perhaps practicality is more important to him, and maybe aesthetics.

Surprisingly, this style has different directions:

Bohemian loft (boho-loft) - the general features of the room are preserved, but some elements of aesthetics and creative imagination are added. Here more attention is paid to the external picture, and only then to the practical purpose.
Glamorous loft gives freedom in the choice of colors. In this case, you can experiment: instead of the standard base black-brown-white to give purple-white or pastel colors.
The industrial direction is the "father" of all loft design. They try to store all the details of the factory or workshop: pipes, wires, concrete columns without decoration, etc.

The design of a loft-style apartment or house has its fans and admirers around the world. He impresses with his freedom and originality. This is the case when the "difficult times" for society gave a new impetus to its development and evolution of comfort for each of us.

Examples of loft-style interior design from the design bureau "Constructive":