Spacious terrace - the heart of the dacha
Even the smallest house will be transformed and become more spacious if you create a beautiful and cozy terrace. It increases the usable area of the house, literally becoming an additional room. You will need quality wooden boards, tools and a couple of days off.
Place a wicker chair, several cozy wooden chairs and a table on the terrace so that you can have tea, read your favorite book or enjoy nature in silence.
Open space
Scandinavians love space and do not like partitions at all. Therefore, it would be appropriate to combine the kitchen with the dining room or even the living room, so that it is one large and cozy space, conventionally separated by design techniques and decorative elements.
It will be especially useful to combine several rooms in a country house if it has a small area.
Natural furniture
A country house is the perfect place to recreate an eco-friendly interior. Choose simple and high-quality furniture made of wood, rattan, possibly with forged parts and natural textiles.
The Scandinavian interior assumes maximum use of natural elements. Scandinavians are quite close to nature, so their homes often reflect this connection both externally and internally. Externally, their houses are designed in such a way as not to disturb the landscape, and inside, living plants are placed everywhere, natural materials are used, as well as the elements: fire, water.
Fireplace
It's about natural elements! The Scandinavians can find a fireplace not only in a private house, but even in an apartment. They love to create corners where they can wrap themselves in a blanket and watch the flames for hours. A Scandinavian-style country house must have a fireplace. You can install a modern fireplace, which is hidden behind glass, or a simple potbelly stove, which can be installed in a finished house.
Adviсe
- Considering the nature of Scandinavia, when creating a garden in this style, use a large number of stones of different sizes and colors, which are laid out in groups or one at a time. The stones should be natural and varied so that the garden does not look boring and monotonous.
- Paths between zones are made of gravel or flat chopped stone. You can also use wooden saw cuts or homemade concrete tiles of different configurations.
- Often in the garden you can see a pond decorated in the same style. The birch tree of the pond is decorated with stones and perennial herbaceous plants are planted. In the middle of the pond you can make a stone mountain topped with a waterfall or a decorative statue.
- It would not be superfluous to build a platform with a fireplace function, on which a barbecue or grill, massive wooden tables and benches and a place for firewood are placed. Such a platform can be round, square or any shape. You can lay out a place for a live fire in the center of the site, decorating it with stones. This could be a large metal vat embedded in the ground, inside which a fire is lit. Rough log benches are placed around the vat.
- When designing a Scandinavian garden, use all the objects located on the site, adapting them to this style. There is no need to remove old trees and bushes. Even a dry stump can become a decorative item.
- Place old curiosities on your property, such as a spindle, barrels or cart wheel, old chrome shoes or other items.
- If you want to make a vegetable garden out of one zone of your plot, you should divide it into beds that will look like flower beds and framed by a low stone border. An important condition is that such a vegetable garden must have a decorative appearance and be neat. Inside the garden, you can plant crops not in a strict linear order, but in zigzags or semicircles, grouping different species, thus creating a decorative bed.
- Climbing plants, such as honeysuckle, akebia, wisteria, ivy, hydrangea, clematis or others, are used as a fence between zones of a garden plot. They are also used to decorate gazebos and camouflage the walls of outbuildings.
Window
Ideally, these are spacious panoramic windows that are not curtained. If possible, you can install high transparent doors or wooden doors with windows on the ground floor of the house. The dacha should have a lot of light and the sun's rays should penetrate the house without hindrance.
Scandinavian style lighting
The second trump card of northern design is its thoughtful attitude to light and the role of the main violin in this matter is given to huge windows with many crossbars. We have already said that Scandinavia does not indulge in an abundance of sunny days, but our region is also full of places where you feel cool.
This is especially true of the northern slopes, as well as those cases when the polar star is visible from the windows of the apartment. Believe me, the interior in question will be more than appropriate for us.
But since we’ve already picked up on the window theme, it wouldn’t be out of place to add that the frames themselves, like the rest of the interior, must be painted white, made of wood and have the simplest possible design.
If the landscape outside the window allows you to not even curtain them, doing without curtains. If not, designers use translucent tulle and simple, white curtains. Sometimes, perhaps with a national motive.
But the windows are during the day or in clear weather. The rest of the time, Scandinavians will be helped out by a real multi-tiered lighting system, which includes chandeliers, floor lamps, sconces and hidden lighting, and all this with a simple single-level ceiling and a minimal amount of decor.
It looks, I must say, this kind of extravagance is simply wonderful. A room filled with soft light always seems larger than it actually is.
Decor and textiles
Use wood. Let it be wooden beams on the ceiling, wooden furniture, plant boxes made of untreated wood, a massive wooden table and chair, wooden decor in the form of deer or elk figures.
Use textiles. At the dacha, tablecloths on tables would also be appropriate (which can rarely be found in Scandinavian apartments), even if they are textile pillows with traditional patterns, or a small soft carpet with a geometric pattern.
Take a closer look at vintage items. An old wooden chest of drawers with luxurious wrought iron fittings, an antique wall clock, a great-grandfather’s suitcase, an aunt’s antique sewing machine. All these things will help create an unusual and pleasant atmosphere at the dacha. But don’t get carried away with the decor, because your Scandinavian-style dacha is not an attic where all things go when no longer needed.
In a country house, the Scandinavian interior is surprisingly transformed, transformed into a Scandinavian rural style or Scandinavian Provence.
Scandinavian style floor
A few words should be said about the flooring of the interior in question. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be wooden. Parquet or, most likely, solid boards, but a budget option with linoleum is also possible, albeit imitating the same wood. As a rule, light-colored species such as beech, birch or pine are used in the work. In addition to their suitable color, they also emphasize the geographical origin of the style, as they are found on the Scandinavian Peninsula.
For carpeting, choose small homespun runners in a national style or a medium-pile carpet made from wool. We remember that tactility plays a fundamental role in this interior.
Scandinavian loft
This symbiosis of styles is perhaps the most suitable option for an existing home. You can easily afford to leave part of the brick wall without decoration, do not deliberately hide pipes or other communications, and do not level the walls to perfect condition. There is no need to try to be a perfectionist and “lick” every meter of the room. The house will then be “alive” when it has its own shortcomings, whims and character.
Keep an eye on the exterior
Not only the interior decoration should reflect the character and principles of the Scandinavian style, but the exterior should also be closely related to the interior. Take care of the lawn, make paths from wooden planks, create impromptu flower beds using boulders, and plant climbing plants near the house.
If there is a garden on the territory, be sure to take advantage of its thickets and place a small gazebo or hang a hammock. In general, the courtyard of a country house is an ideal place for various art installations. Here you can place your works made of clay, crafts made from natural materials, try your hand at trash art by planting plants in rubber boots or old teapots.
You will achieve a harmonious Scandinavian interior in a country house when you play along with the age of the house, filling it with those interior and household items that are close in spirit. Don't try to modernize it, but rather maintain its charm by adding a little organization and coziness.
Colored floor or ceiling
In Scandinavian countries there is little sun, so local residents often paint their indoor ceilings in bright sunny colors. A yellow ceiling in combination with white walls will look especially harmonious.
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The floor is also sometimes painted in bright colors. Using different shades you can zone the space. Rooms with such color accents don't even need additional decoration.
