Scandinavian Interior Design Ideas: Kitchen & Living Room

We continue the series of articles about sophisticated interiors and similar items you can purchase to add details of this interior to yours. Often the interior we are looking at is European and most of the items are custom-made locally. So, we are trying to grasp the total concept and our feeling from the interior itself.

Scandinavian Interior design is one of the biggest associations with the country itself. It is environmentally friendly, practical, functional, and close to nature.

In 1899, Swedish writer Ellen Kay published an essay “Beauty for All” (sv. Skönhet för alla), where she first formulated a concept important for all the subsequent development of Swedish and Scandinavian design industry. The aesthetics of everyday life, according to Kay, has a direct impact on the quality of human life and therefore can influence society as a whole. Surround yourself with beauty, and your life will be better.

Kay’s book has become an instruction for several generations of Swedes on how to arrange everything at home. Some of her tips are still relevant today for example she suggested making the walls of houses white, just hanging the wallpaper facing the reverse side.

Swedish architects and designers can also easily become psychologists – they create spaces where the priority is to make people feel good first.

Look at any Swedish interior: open and spacious rooms set the mood for relaxation that makes you see the beauty of each object, and the absence of unnecessary things relieves anxiety. Light walls and muted tones give a sense of peace and inner balance.

Undoubtedly, the concise shapes and refined lines of Swedish interior design are the heritage of functionalists who insisted that each design element has a meaningful function and excluded redundancy or irrelevant embellishments. Seemingly simple objects and spaces are the results of the long and painstaking work of designers, whose creative tools are deliberately limited.

Swedish interior design we are looking at in this article is a prominent example of traditional Swedish approach mixed with modern thought and laconic decor.

Nicole works as a fashion designer for & Other Stories and Andreas Wilson is an actor. They live in Enskedefältet, just outside Stockholm with their two children in the home Nicole grew up in. Once they moved in however they had to make the place their own and changed virtually every surface, moved walls and completely remodeled the kitchen which is now on the opposite side of the house.

Also, their amazing Rio coffee table is by Charlotte Perriand for Cassina!