Give Your Home a Rough Edginess with Industrial Furniture

Lofts with exposed bricks, pipes or concrete, oversized windows, high ceilings, raw unfinished wood, repurposed furniture, as well as a lack of unnecessary embellishments, is the first image that comes to mind when we talk about industrial style. However, nowadays there are many homes and businesses that have adopted elements of this ‘history meets modern decor’ style. Whether it’s furniture pieces, light fixtures, or accessories, these can all add interest and uniqueness to your home design. Industrial style furniture gives off a sense of roughness that can help you achieve an industrial look, giving your home a certain raw edginess.

The big open spaces and the raw materials and simple clean lines make industrial style very attractive and striking. However, despite its impactfulness, industrial decor is minimalistic. Hues of dark and light neutrals, such as greys, blacks, whites and browns are the dominant colours, with bare concrete, bricks and wood being the main features.

What Is Industrial Furniture

When we talk about industrial furniture, we can say that it’s characterised by a timeworn and bare effect, mostly made of natural materials such as metal, wood, or even concrete, since this style often leaves the materials exposed. Industrial furniture wasn’t really meant to be stylish, and it wasn’t intended to become a distinct style. In fact, it came out of necessity for functionality and sturdiness, as well as out of financial issues.

However, though in the beginning, the furniture used was really the furniture found in old industrial companies converted into something that you need at home, today most of these furniture pieces are purposely built to achieve this raw, bare look.

How to Achieve Industrial Look with Furniture

Whether you are going for a completely industrial design, or you have decided to try mixing designs, impressive industrial look furniture pieces can bring more style and function to your home. Nowadays, these decorative elements often give off that “used” effect of the original industrial furniture pieces for a more distinguished industrial look.

Add Industrial to Other Styles

Mixing home decor styles can be a great way for you to show your personality, and give your space interest. Like everything in this style, industrial style furniture is also stripped off of finishes and embellishments. Furniture pieces are made with raw, bare materials, such as exposed concrete, wood or metal, or sometimes leather – mostly brown. Because of the nature of the style that inspires them, these furniture pieces are quite simple, unlike furniture made in many other styles, makes them look humble. This is probably one of the reasons why they go so well with any minimalistic style, as long as it’s well thought out.

Furniture of course isn’t the only way to add an industrial vibe to your home decor. You can get it by adding decorations, like a steampunk exposed mechanism, you can expose pipes or bricks, or you can use some of those super-realistic wallpapers, you can use industrial style light fixtures, with wire cages or exposed bulbs… However, industrial look furniture is fairly easy to add to many different interior design styles, and it can be used to achieve many different effects.

Nevertheless, one very important thing to remember when you’re mixing styles, is that one of the styles should be a guest to the other. One has to dominate, because mixing them equally may result in something odd-looking. For instance, a piece of industrial furniture can do wonders for a Scandinavian home design. Because of the hues they use, as well as how pronounced functionality is in both styles, Scandi and industrial go really well together.

Play with Colours

Industrial style is perceived as very cold and dark, which also makes it perfect for mixing with warmer and lighter styles. A nice wooden armchair or a concrete bench can create a beautifully striking contrast. Or an industrial style table with wooden top with iron legs, for instance in a modern decor setting. By simply choosing one or two signature pieces in this style, and adding it in your room, you can get the industrial vibe you are aiming for.

Furthermore, since the colours are so neutral, and the designs so simple, industrial furniture can be a nice backdrop for almost any colour or pattern. Simply adding one or two signature pieces in this style can make a huge difference. In fact, if you are mixing it with Scandinavian decor, for instance, adding some colour might be a great idea.

Take Advantage of Art

Similarly, when it comes to art, you don’t need a big hanging exposed clock mechanism to decorate, but instead, you can mix art pieces and decorations that you would often find in other home design styles. Industrial furniture can pair well with many types of art pieces, whether they are abstract artworks, paintings, prints, posters or photographs of nature, portraits…, whether they are black and white, monochromatic or colourful. Art pieces can be a great way to warm up the style visually, bring colour to the space, or simply to contrast the rawness of the furniture pieces.