The loft-style (translated from English as an attic) appeared in New York in the 40s of the last century. Young artists set up their workshops in the empty spaces of former factories, using the features of industrial interiors to create a special style. Later, all this was reflected in the design of ordinary city apartments.
So there was a fashionable style for today.
Loft style kitchen design
Loft-style kitchen – fashionable, modern, unexpected
Peculiarities
- For a loft-style design, a large unenclosed space is chosen. A combined kitchen with a hall is suitable
- Details are of primary importance here: they must imitate a factory room. There may be pipes, stairs, ventilation grates, beams, and so on.
- Particular attention should be paid to the windows. They should be tall, better from the floor. They are decorated only with blinds.
- Hanging chandeliers are used for lighting.
Most of all, the loft style is suitable for creative youth.
Preference is given to gray and blue tones, metallic colors. Often the walls are different: for example, red brick masonry is imitated on one wall, the other three are painted with gray paint. The texture is a combination of modern glass and steel with an allegedly unfinished rough finish of the past: boards, beams, plaster, brick.
The floor can be plank and the walls are smoothly painted in modern shades, the ceiling is drywall or rough beams, and the floor is exquisitely laid parquet or modern laminate.
There are virtually no partitions in the interior of the loft style, the rooms are divided into functional zones visually or with the help of pieces of furniture. For this, cabinets, racks, various hinged structures, screens are used.
The color and texture of the walls help to divide the room. For example, the kitchen wall is brick, while the living room walls are ugly, painted blue. The border between the kitchen and the living room is marked by a long table and decorative ceiling beams in the interior.
Furniture is most often either metal or painted like metal. But it can also be wooden, in contrasting light and dark tones. All decoration is directed only to her. There is not much furniture, but it attracts unusual shapes and bright saturated colors. Perhaps a combination of antique and ultra-modern furniture.
Accessories and wall decor play a big role here. They are very peculiar: posters, graffiti, abstract paintings, framed black and white photographs. Framed paintings and photos are often placed on the floor and simply leaned against the wall.
Enliven the interior and large soft poufs, placed throughout the room, and the most unexpected knick-knacks, such as old-fashioned elephants on a bright designer bookcase. The forged chest next to the computer desk and so on.
With such an organization of the interior, there is a lot of light and air in the rooms.
The main features of the style can be distinguished:
- openness of space ─ no permanent partitions;
- high ceilings;
- good lighting ─ windows can be from floor to ceiling.
It is not at all necessary to create a soft style in the entire apartment. It is enough to use it in one part: say, in the kitchen-living room.
Advantages and disadvantages
You will be surprised how spacious your apartment is if you take advantage of the loft-style.
The undoubted advantages of the loft-style include the following:
- the absence of unnecessary items in the interior;
- ease of cleaning;
- a small number of items that absorb dust (carpets, curtains);
- good illumination;
- open plan;
- versatility of furniture and interior details;
- the possibility of improvisation in space.
The disadvantages include:
- lack of separate rooms where you can retire;
- difficulties with family accommodation;
- smells from the kitchen, spreading throughout the room;
- lack of intimacy in the interior;
To prevent odors from spreading throughout the apartment, you can put a sliding glass partition.
Combined kitchen-living room
Even in the photo, the loft-style kitchen-living room looks exotic and extravagant
kitchen area
In such kitchens, the character of their owners is manifested. As a rule, these are people who love risk, change, life in a big city.
In this interior, you can embody the most daring ideas.
A loft-style kitchen is given a minimum of space in the room.
The main features of the loft-style kitchen:
- used materials and textures are contrasting;
- walls: concrete, brick, paint;
- ceiling: old wooden beams, concrete floors;
- floor: wooden, solid wood board, parquet;
- kitchen set: large, details that did not fit along one wall are placed throughout the space;
- ultra-modern kitchen appliances: large food processors, coffee machines, chrome ovens, high-tech hoods and so on;
- retro kitchen appliances: ZIL refrigerators, a kerosene stove, a butter churn, and so on;
- colors: gray, blue, brown;
- furniture facade: wooden;
- furniture design: simple shapes with retro fittings with many open shelves;
- crockery: metal modern and retro, copper, cast iron. Is in plain sight;
- a long table for 6-10 persons;
- the palette as a whole is muted with rare bright details;
- wall panels or apron: mirrored or lined with large squares of contrasting tiles, made under steel;
- communications: pipes, hanging hoods, retro sockets, boxes are on display;
- lighting: multiple sources;
- soft coating on the floor: smooth texture, drawing of children’s “classics”, a pedestrian zebra, and so on on a gray background;
Indoor flowers are not provided in this style, but if you plant something unconventional, for example, araucaria or judis in a geometric pot, it will noticeably enliven and warm the interior without violating the style.
Often the space of the kitchen is separated from the space of the living room by a bar counter with glasses or a long table-island.
Stylish kitchen will suit inactive and creative individuals
living area
- the main detail of the living area is a trendy giant TV;
- opposite is a large sofa of the original form, covered with leather or expensive textiles, with many pillows;
- near the sofa, you can put a rug of bright colors, or imitating the skin of an animal. It is good to put a small coffee table;
- many different places to sit: poufs, chairs on wheels, low benches;
- swings and hammocks look good;
- color schemes in this zone are extravagant, quite unexpected: red, black, wine. For lovers, muted dusty tones are possible. The walls are covered with acrylic paints;
- wooden frames and plinths;
- accents are placed using bright colors;
- ceiling can be white. Ideally, as in the kitchen, pipes and ceilings can pass along the ceiling;
- floor: laminate, floorboard, varnished;
- lamps of geometric shapes in large quantities;
- carpets made of felt and felt. Suede is widely used;
A feature of the loft are unusual designs: it can be both open pipes of communications and raw ceiling beams
Small kitchen
The loft style is characterized by minimalism, so it visually expands the kitchen. The principles for designing a small kitchen are the same as for a large one, but there are a few tricks.
- a small loft-style kitchen can be visually expanded into zones by installing its own light sources in each of them;
- you can save space by placing a piece of equipment, such as a sink, by the window;
- you can accommodate all the necessary furniture, placing it in a semicircle;
- and, finally, put an island table, visually dividing the living room and kitchen, and at the same time save space by embedding the stove in the table.
Often in small apartments, the idea of using a loft is the only way to expand the space of the kitchen, combining it in the same style with the living room.
Renovation in the loft style kitchen
Where to start repair – the answer is here.
When starting repair work in the kitchen, one must not forget that the loft is the style of an abandoned attic.
At the beginning of the repair, the floral wallpaper is mercilessly torn off. The walls are exposed. The plaster is washed off.
Removed linoleum and tiles. It is important to see the original texture of the walls, floor, and ceiling.
Walls and ceiling
- If there are no ceilings on the ceiling, then decorative ones made of timber or drywall are mounted.
- Overlappings from a bar are artificially aged, and drywall is painted under metal.
- Cleaned and plastered two walls.
- The concrete wall can be left unplastered.
An apron made of decorative stone or a mirror surface is mounted on the wall above the stove and around the sink.
Instead of an apron made of ceramic tiles, a sheet of simple stainless steel can also be fixed here, as an original detail, characteristic of the style.
Kitchens with brick
For a loft, finding a brick wall is a real find.
But if there is no such wall, then it is easy to imitate it. You can do this in several ways:
- Buy facing brick. There is a lot of it, and it paints well. You can even paint each brick a different color and lay out some kind of conceptual mosaic.
- Buy wallpaper with a brick pattern. You just need to stick them on.
- But do not brick all the walls. It is enough to think over and arrange one in such a technique. It will become the focal point of the entire kitchen.
Wallpaper
Wallpaper can also be used in the loft. Moreover, not only imitating bricks.
They are chosen with a texture that repeats the elements of different building materials: plaster, concrete, boards. What wallpaper to choose for the kitchen, read here.
If you do not want to leave the walls bare, you can use textured wallpaper for the loft-style.
Wallpaper is often used to accent certain corners. Then it is bright monochromatic: burgundy, orange, yellow, green. With geometric or abstract patterns.
Loft style floor
For flooring, it is better to use wood or laminate. Preference is given to the first, although the laminate is more practical, it is the tree that fully conveys the chosen style.
The floor is made of solid wood floorboards. In this case, it will look solid and rude.
Sometimes large ceramic tiles are used for their decoration. By the way, it is not so easy to heat a large space of a combined kitchen, but if you make an electric infrared warm floor become much more comfortable, weigh the pros and cons by reading our article.
Lighting
Loft style is a combination of old and new, ultramodern and retro. This should be especially pronounced in the lamps. There must be many. Each zone has its own lighting fixture. Lamps are mounted on walls, ceilings (preferably hanging long ones), they can stand on the floor and shelves of racks.
Furniture in the kitchen
Such an interior does not involve the purchase of a single headset. But a small kitchen “wall” can be purchased. In the headset, it is better to choose cabinets with doors, because there will be enough open shelves on the shelves.
- Furniture can be kept in one color or contrasting colors can be used. For example, white and black.
- The kitchen has shelving with a metal base and rough wooden shelves.
- Suitable chairs, cabinets from different sets. If you want to put a small sofa in the kitchen, read our tips.
It is not recommended to leave blankets, shawls, wicker baskets for needlework in sight. Such details break the unity of style.
Decor
These paintings are suitable for decorating a loft-style living room kitchen
The decoration of a loft-style space has its own characteristics. Not only reproductions from Shishkin’s paintings but even from Impressionist paintings will not work here. But reproductions from the paintings of abstractionists, supremacists, cubists, and fauvists will successfully complement the interior.
It is worth adding here medium-sized installations made of metal, vintage, it would be appropriate to place graffiti on one of the walls.
These installations will harmoniously fit into the interior
If you want to hang curtains on the windows, you can take rolled ones, they will be quite appropriate. The kitchen utensils of the last century placed on the open shelves of cabinets and on the shelves will be a good addition to the decor.
Loft is a system that is constantly changing following the desires of the owner.
Loft style kitchen
It may look like this: on a white ceiling, there are metal openwork ceilings. A kitchen set with a dark brown wooden facade stands directly against the wall. There is a mirrored apron above the stove and sink made of stone. The adjoining walls are covered in concrete with white paint. An old bicycle stands against the left wall, on the handlebars of which a string bag hangs. The opposite is a tall window with raised shutters. By the window, there is a pot-bellied chest of drawers in the style of a la fifties. Judis grows on it in a cast-iron pot.
This is what your kitchen might look like
Choosing a style in the design of your kitchen is not an easy task. A person spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and it is important that he feels comfortable there. The loft is very democratic, it gives scope for the flight of thoughts and imagination.