Design and décor for autumn: Stylish ideas for the living space

With autumn fast approaching, it’s that time of year again – time to consider your living space, your home decor, and ideas for reflecting the change in seasons within the home environment. This autumn looks set on trends that combine softer hues, cosy spaces and functional designs, across autumnal colour palettes and textures, to create a more relaxing ambience at home.

Colours evoke different emotions, and carry the spirit of the season. From your home furniture, soft furnishing, lighting, artwork, even wallpaper and paintwork, subtle changes in tone can do wonders for your style and decor this autumn season.

Whether you’re going for a whole home renovation, or light touches to stay relevant to the seasonal changes outside, there are a few key areas and ideas you can implement in your home decor to be bang on trend this season.

Natural Themes

With autumn reflecting most vividly in the natural world around us, it’s no surprise natural themes are set to be big this autumn. Organic, earthy colours are back with a bang, with deep browns, muted reds, oranges and mossy greens the order of the day. Similarly, dark woods contrasting with deep greens, reds and mauves can give the perfect highlights (or lowlights) of autumn for your living space.

Don’t be tempted to go overboard here – we definitely don’t want your home looking like your garden. But design elements and accessories that pick up on hints of natural themes and the colours synonymous with this time of year are perfect for the kind of autumnal makeover that will mark out your home as a contemporary, stylish space.

Textures and Layers

Aside from colours and natural themes, textures and layers can make a big difference when it comes to your interior design. We’re talking things like rugs, curtains, upholstery, cushions – they can all make a huge impact on your space, and often with just a modest impact on your budget. For this autumn, you want to be pitching for a range of material textures – from smooths to deep pile, plush rugs and thick curtains, to give your home that stylised look.

Think of your textures like colours in 3D – a chance to integrate more themes of the natural world within your space, while adding some much needed depth and sophistication to any design. Even furniture items and accessories can be helpful here, in introducing new textures and shapes that can really offset the rest of your interior. Materials like velvet and shaggy rugs are very popular this year, and can really lift the feeling of a room right into the autumn season.

Cosy Spaces

As the nights draw in and the weather takes a turn for the colder, bolstering your cosy spaces will really pay dividends this autumn. You’ll be more likely to spend more time indoors, so an emphasis on home spaces for indoor activities is a good idea. Areas for reading books and watching movies, can give your home a functional makeover for the autumn, as well as practically improving your living environment for the winter months.

There’s also a benefit for those who like to snuggle with their partner, families and pets. By focusing more on comfort ahead of those long winter months, you can transform your living space into the autumnal hideout, simply by focusing on uprating your cosy spaces and environments.

Accessories, Lighting and Retro Elements

One of the quickest ways to freshen up your interior is through accessories – simply things like dried and fresh flowers, plants, ornaments and candles. These don’t take a lot of planning or expense, but can overhaul the feel and look of any room – especially coming into autumn, with the chance to reflect the change of the seasons in colour, texture and material through a single, simple purchase. Bonus points for anything Scandinavian and minimalist, key themes for this autumn that will have you firmly on trend.

Similarly, lighting options can make a big difference, especially looking at cosy lighting such as lamps, chandeliers and inset lighting. Artistic statement lighting is also proving increasingly popular, a strong feature that can radically overhaul the look of your room while making a bold statement about your sense of interior style.

Another big theme this autumn looks set to be retro elements, integrating themes of nostalgia and the past within your interior. Again, ideal for executing with accessories, these types of elements can be quickly positioned in your home to reflect an acute sense of style, on point and on trend for the season ahead.

With autumn now just a matter of weeks away, uprating your living space and introducing seasonal elements to your interior is more pressing than any time in the last 12 months. Luckily, with a few simple ideas and easy touches, it’s possible to overhaul any space, and to make any living environment perfectly sympathetic to the changes in the season.

The editorial unit