Since co-founding Inredningsvis in February 2012, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Swedish home decor blogs. I’ve also become more aware of the concept of Scandinavian style, and how some bloggers are able to incorporate these design concepts into their blogs.
Both Maria and I have spent a lot of time on the design and layout of Inredningsvis, so that it too presents a true Swedish blog face to the world.
So, in this post I’m going to try to explain a little about the characteristics of Scandinavian / Swedish style, and how we have used these elements with Inredningsvis – the Swedish interior design, decor and inspiration blog that we’re both very proud of.
Let’s start with basic Scandinavian style.
Swedish Home Decor Blogs and Scandinavian style
Simplicity, functionality, minimalism, affordability, clean beauty, subtle class. These are the main characteristics that define Scandinavian style, home decor, and interior design.
Take this typical Swedish living room for example. There’s nothing particularly extravagant about it. The room is unassuming, clean, and simple. Even the beautiful tile fireplace in the corner blends in surruptitiously with the walls behind. However, this minimalistic Swedish home decor gives the room a calm feeling. It’s open and fresh.
With Inredningsvis, we use a lot of white, off-white, and greys. These shades are like the walls of this living room. We used these colours as our background for the blog to emulate this calm, airy, and uncluttered feeling.
Swedish home design
In Swedish home design, you rarely see vast differences in decor in different rooms. The style of the living room in the apartment below flows freely into the kitchen and dining room area.
We try to have this same design concept in mind on our main index page.
How? We always display a first blog post in its entirety, and subsequent posts as excerpts with thumbnail images. But instead of breaking the flow between these with ads, thick black lines, or other unnecessary details, we simply use a thin light grey line. This subtlety is our way of creating flow. We’ve also seen this design concept copied in a number of other Swedish home decor blogs.
Details matter in Swedish home decor, blogs, and design
Have a good look at this lovely Swedish kitchen below. Now, imagine the same room without the lamp shades, antique chairs, and without the retro kitchen details. Boring, right? These small details are subtle, but they make all the difference here.
Attention to detail is an important part of maintaining quality on a true Swedish home decor blog. Beautiful images are important, but have you noticed in almost all of our posts, our images are the same width? This is no accident :) We also try to keep consistency in our headers, sub-headers, and fonts. These may seem like small details, but they really do account for that Swedish / Scandinavian style on a blog.
Accent colour in decor, accent colour on a decor blog
In this living room, the key element that gives it a lift is the use of an accent colour – in this case, pink. If you imagine the room without the pink shades, it appears almost clinical. However, the pink decor here gives the room some charm, class, and feminitity, without but still adheres to the subtlety and simplicity that is Swedish / Scandinavian style.
With Inredningsvis, we’ve used this exact same principle when it comes to accent colours. All of our links in blog articles are displayed with “inredningsvis pink” – a custom colour we chose early in the design process.
The best Swedish home decor blog and Scandinavian Style: Conclusion
Swedish design is all about keeping things simple, clean, beautiful, but very subtle. You can see these design principles in all forms of Scandinavian design, including furniture, home decor, and fashion.
We’ve tried to incorporate these these principles to create the best Swedish home decor blog we can, in Inredningsvis.
Perhaps some of these ideas could be used in your blog too?
Have a great day!
/Jon
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