Scandinavian houses: 50 photos inside and out

It is not surprising that the Scandinavian style is becoming increasingly popular in our country. The peculiarities of home decoration of the North European countries are close to our compatriots because of climatic features. In many regions of our homeland, the same long, long winters, slushy off-season and short summers. In the northern countries of Europe, the climate leaves its mark on the way of arranging houses and apartments - an abundance of natural light and a variety of lighting fixtures to get rid of the feeling of a dark winter, exclusively natural materials for decoration and furniture making, to be closer to nature. All these stylistic motifs, which are based on long-standing traditions, can be useful in the design of private houses in Russia.

If you choose the Scandinavian style or its individual elements to design your own home, then get ready to fork out, because the traditions of Scandinavia dictate the use of natural materials. At present, you can find good options for finishing materials and raw materials for making furniture, but successful imitations are also not cheap. But we can say with absolute certainty that a home decorated in the Scandinavian style will be relevant for many years. The modern style of the interior is increasingly striving for practicality in the use of furniture and decor, for simple and rigorous forms, for minimizing decorations for the room, but maintaining the highest level of functionality of the home.

The same can be said about the external design of private houses made in the Scandinavian style. Simple and clear forms, a minimum of outdoor decor and the use of natural building and decoration materials to create a facade that harmoniously fits both in the landscapes of suburban life and in the framework of urban private cottage settlements.

Exterior of a private house in the Scandinavian style - features of the design of facades

The first and most important distinguishing feature of Scandinavian-style home ownership is its large panoramic windows. The lack of sunlight due to the northern climate is pushing homeowners to build houses with huge windows and glass doors. If the house has one floor, then most likely some of its walls will be almost completely glass. If the cottage has an attic or a second floor, then here we can observe large windows, glass doors with access to the balcony. In the Scandinavian countries, much attention is paid to the production of energy-efficient double-glazed windows that can retain the heat received from sunlight.

Finishing the facades of private houses with wooden lining is a frequent design technique for the countries of Scandinavia. This is not only environmentally friendly material for humans and the environment for cladding the external walls of the home, but also excellent surface protection with a high level of thermal conductivity. Of course, such a facade cladding will require a considerable budget, but this is a successful investment in your own comfort and ease of operation of the home.

Very often you can find contrasting combinations in the design of the facade of home ownership, made in the Scandinavian style. For example, when using light wood for wall cladding, window frames and doorways are decorated in dark colors. Or vice versa - a dark lining made of wood is combined with bright window and doorways. Such contrasts not only allow the house to stand out against the general background of gray autumn or snowy winter, but also delight homeowners and their guests with their image from the first minutes of approaching the home.

Scandinavian dwellings or houses, in the design of which elements of the Northern European style are used, are usually executed with a gable roof. This design is necessary for convenient snow discharge. The attic spaces formed under such a roof have strong sloping ceilings, but they are still used to equip private rooms, usually bedrooms or offices.

If the Scandinavian house is not tiled with a wooden wall board, it is sure to be painted white. At the same time, snow-white finish is achieved both by applying to plastered walls, and they cover brick surfaces with white facade paint. White walls are usually accompanied by a dark color scheme for the design of the roof, window and doorways.

If a Scandinavian-style house is decorated with a dark cladding board or materials that successfully imitate it, then the building has many panoramic windows. In small houses, entire walls are diverted under glass surfaces.

The use of combination in the decoration of the facade of the house allows you to achieve an original and attractive appearance of the home. The combination of light painting with a wooden lining or block house, a facade board or thermal panels allows you to achieve not only contrast, but also the uniqueness of the exterior of the building.

European countries (including northern ones) pay a lot of attention to energy conservation, so often on the roofs and walls of houses on the south side you can see solar panels. Similar designs have already become an integral attribute in the appearance of a European private home.

Among the many options for building and decorating private housing, you can also find very original specimens. Asymmetric shapes or an unusual arrangement of windows, an original way of using traditional finishing materials or a non-standard choice of color palette for bold homeowners or their designers is not the limit.

Scandinavian style interior - natural peace, spaciousness and comfort

In the modern Scandinavian style, everything is also clearly traced to the roots - snowy expanses, forests and the Viking heritage. It was the climatic conditions and features of the difficult northern life that left their mark on the way home was decorated. For many Russians living in regions with a long winter or gray and dank off-season, the motives of Scandinavian interiors are close. We also lack sunlight, we love our open spaces, coniferous and deciduous forests and want to equip the home with maximum comfort and convenience.

The Scandinavian-style interior is characterized by the use of a light palette, both in decoration and furniture. The use of natural materials is another iconic way of giving the room a decor of Scandinavian motifs. If you advocate practicality, but without fail with comfort, if you are attracted to simple and strict forms, if the bright palette of the room is your theme, then the Scandinavian style can become a support for decorating your own home, fill it with a feeling of freshness, cleanliness, freedom and comfort .

Living room

The living room is the heart of the crowbar, the room where the whole family gathers in the evening after a hard day, and on weekends, meetings with friends and relatives take place. That is why the living room should be ready for any type of pastime, both in the family circle and for the receptions of guests. A light finish and a neutral palette for upholstered furniture is an almost absolute option for getting into the style of the Scandinavian countries. To create accents, you can use bright sofa cushions, shelves with variegated roots of books, wall decor, but in a very dosed form.

In the Scandinavian-style living room, there are usually snow-white walls and wooden flooring. But for the ceiling decoration, various options can be used - from a perfectly smooth snow-white surface to ceiling beams with a rough finish, even some rusticity. Wooden ceilings or beams are usually painted white, often intentionally leaving gaps of wood shades.

To design an accent wall in a living room, made in the Scandinavian style, using brickwork. It is not customary to leave a brick wall in a primordial bright red color, the surface can be covered with a thin translucent layer of a protective composition that creates a whitening effect. Sometimes a brick wall is completely covered with white paint, creating an accent in the room only textured.

Often, the living room combines the functions of the dining room. Zoning of the space in this case is very arbitrary - only with the help of furniture and sometimes by means of carpeting in the recreation area. In addition, the level of illumination for each zone should be taken into account. During daylight hours, both functional areas have plenty of natural light thanks to large windows. But for the evening, the dining room and living room area need different options for the intensity and degree of diffusion of lighting. As a rule, one or two lamps (chandeliers) are hung above a dining table, and a floor lamp is installed in a recreation area near a sofa or armchairs.

Living rooms with a snow-white finish and furniture, bright in all senses of the word, with bright accents, are often living plants and objects of furniture or decor made of wood. Such color spots not only help our eyes to focus, but also bring the atmosphere of the rest room of the whole family closer to nature.

In the living rooms, made in the Scandinavian style, you can often find contrasting combinations of white and black colors. At the same time, it is obvious that white shades will prevail in these games of contrasts, and black tones will be used in dosage, more than moderately. Against the background of snow-white finish, thin black elements of lighting fixtures, light furniture, wall decor in the form of frames for photos or paintings look advantageous.

The decoration of the living rooms in the Scandinavian style has quite clear requirements only in choosing a color palette. The snow-white design of the ceilings, for example, can be decorated with stucco molding, which is easy to continue to decorate the fireplace (if there is one in the living room).

In a snow-white Scandinavian living room, as a rule, one or two bright spots can be found. Usually furniture accents act as color accents, less often decorative elements. The bright upholstery of the chair, sofa or a small pouf can transform the entire interior in snow-white, cool colors.

The presence of a fireplace in the living room with North European motifs in the design is not only a tribute to tradition, when the hearth in the common room served primarily as a source of heat, but also the possibility of decorating the room. In modern rooms, you can often find electrical analogues of family homes, fake fireplaces for installing candles or aroma lamps, but there are enough existing sources of fire in the living rooms.

The greatest manifestation of northern minimalism is achieved by the interior of the living room, in which in addition to the soft zone, represented only by a sofa, one can note only the presence of a fireplace as a heat source and a decorative element of the room. Light decoration of a spacious room, neutral shades of furniture and carpet, an abundance of natural light - everything in this space sets up peace, rest and relaxation.

Kitchen and dining room

It is possible to equip a Scandinavian-style kitchen with any size, shape and modification of the room. The use of a light palette and simple and concise forms helps to visually expand the space and create a feeling of freedom and spaciousness even in small rooms. A light palette for decorating a room is a prerequisite, but the kitchen set can be made of light wood or other materials for the facades of kitchen cabinets in pastel shades. So that the room does not look too faceless and does not resemble a sterile operating room, one or two accent spots are usually used - these can be chairs from the dining room group or a dining table.

The most common embodiment of the kitchen set in the Scandinavian style is snow-white smooth facades. A single-row or angular layout of the kitchen ensemble allows you to place all the necessary storage systems, household appliances and work surfaces in such a way that there is enough space for the installation of the dining group. For the dining area, as a rule, furniture is selected from natural materials of simple and concise forms, sometimes even with a touch of rude rural style. The dining group can be represented by chairs of the same model, as well as completely different options for performance, color palette and texture.

If wood is used in the kitchen space not only as a floor covering, but also for wall or part wall lining, then to create a harmonious and comfortable atmosphere of a bright room, the natural material is painted white. The same thing happens with masonry or brickwork, which can be used both to create a textured accent of one of the walls, and to design a kitchen apron.

Scandinavian-style rooms are not alien to contrasts, especially for kitchen spaces. As already mentioned, the rooms of the Scandinavian dwellings are filled with natural light due to the abundance of panoramic windows and the presence of glass doors from floor to ceiling. That is why the use of dark tones to create contrast in a bright kitchen can be not only justified, but also become a unique feature of the interior. Dark shades can be used to make the bottom of a kitchen ensemble or island, the structural elements of a room, a dining group, or household appliances.

Bedroom

The Scandinavian-style sleeping and relaxation room is a bright and airy room with an abundance of white in the decoration and furnishings of the room, as well as in the decoration of its decor with textiles and decor. The bedroom with the motives of the Northern European style is incredibly practical, often it is represented by the most minimal set of furniture - a bed and small tables, stands or bedside tables. A distinctive feature in the decoration of the bedroom is the use of textiles for window openings. In Scandinavian rooms, often panoramic windows do not decorate at all. Or, a translucent snow-white tulle is used to give even more airiness and freshness to the room. But the bedroom should be ready for sufficient dimming at any time of the day, so roller blinds or Roman curtains can be an ideal option for window decoration. Or you can use the more traditional option for our country to design windows using translucent curtains with a small, unobtrusive pattern.

To create an accent wall in the bedroom, decorated with elements of Scandinavian style, soft shades of decorative materials are used, which can be either wallpaper with a neutral pattern or wall panels - embossed or wooden. Machine or hand knitting is often used as a textile decor for bedrooms - a reminder of Scandinavian roots, harsh winters and the need to get heat from any sources.

The Scandinavian style of interior is prone to exaggerating a minimalist atmosphere, and it is in the bedroom that this thesis is most reflected. A bed in the center of the room and a small storage system for the most necessary is too austere for some, the norm is for others.

As decorative elements or structural parts in a snow-white bedroom, natural elements can be used - parts of trunks or tree branches. Straw or dried plants, cones and even moss. Such details allow not only to personalize the interior, but also to make it unique, memorable.

Bathroom

The bathroom, like no other utilitarian room in our homes, is characterized by the presence of white, as a symbol of cleanliness and freshness. The Scandinavian style with its love of simple and concise interiors in bright colors is the best suited to the design of the room for water and sanitary procedures. Snow-white ceramic tiles or light marble - ideal for cladding bathroom surfaces. Well, you can always create color accents with the help of bath accessories, rugs or towels.

The use of wooden beams on a snow-white background of surface finish did not pass by such rooms of Scandinavian style as bathrooms. As a rule, the use of natural wood in a room for water treatment is exclusively decorative. Many designers believe that the snow-white finish in the bathroom creates too cool and even sterile atmosphere. To raise the degree of the room, to give it a touch of natural warmth, wood in various modifications is excellent.

Small parts add up to the overall image of the room. In a bathroom decorated with the Scandinavian style of interior, such details can be elements of a rustic style - small wooden coasters or stools, wicker baskets as storage systems or even living plants in pots or tubs. Even the ultramodern interior in this case "softens", it becomes more comfortable and warmer.