How to use kitsch in the interior

The birth of kitsch style is associated with the border of the XIX-XX centuries. Bad taste, quickie and cheap stuff - these concepts in no way reflect the entire contents of kitsch. Called "pseudo-art," kitsch exists and develops in many areas and industries, from interior design to architecture.

Painting with a big apple on the orange wall of the living room

Only courageous and creative people, rebels by nature can allow kitsch in the interior

A bit of history

The concept came from Germany, that is how German designers defined something visually tasteless. In the 1950s, he survived a rebirth. J. Baudrillard is a philosophical ideologist of kitsch, the progenitor of a whole movement of artists for preferring the concept of appearance.

Blue lampshades in the living room with a beige sofa

Kitsch was originally an example of bad taste

Colorful chairs in the kitchen in the style of kitsch.

Kitsch later emerged as a style that denied classical canons.

For nearly 100 years, the word "kitsch" was pronounced in a half-whisper and was considered almost abusive. E. Warhol and C. Oldenburg used kitsch as a style technique. “The principle of the absence of principles” by F. Johnson is the motto of postmodernism, and at the same time kitsch as one of its parts. Only with the advent of the XXI century, kitsch began to be perceived as a full-fledged style in the interior. It symbolizes adherence to a higher class culture.

Kitsch Interior Design Directions

The main principle is disharmony. The lack of color and style combinations is typical of kitsch. Disorder is better for him than orderly appeasement.

Open shelves with books on the wall of the living room in the style of kitsch.

Kitsch is easily recognizable by the mixture of objects that should not be next to the logic of other styles

Home cabinet design in red

Bright aggressive walls of red color - a very bold solution for the interior of your office

Kitsch Style Features

  1. The dissonance of forms and colors, the apparent lack of obvious harmony, loudness, pretentiousness.
  2. A combination of conflicting materials and elements, such as plastic and velvet.
  3. An excess of romantic, childish, cute, decorative attributes like ruffles, bows, flowers, including artificial ones.
  4. Mandatory gilding wherever possible, fakes and imitations.
  5. Flashy colors and their unexpected contrasting combinations, such as purple and lemon, raspberry and neon, etc.
Modular wall made of colored cubes in the living room

In the interior of kitsch, it is customary to combine pastel shades with bright, acidic tones.

Two chandeliers of different styles on the kitsch-style living room ceiling

Classic and avant-garde furniture can stand in one room.

Types of kitsch style

In modern design, there are three types of style:

  1. Kitsch lumpen, who was born out of need and poverty, out of a desire to equip life with any taste, despite the lack of material resources.

    Red sofa and portraits in the living room kitsch style lumpens

    Kitsch lumpen in the interior of a small living room

  2. Pseudo-luxurious style - characterized by a lack of taste and the presence of cash investments. The fragmentation of cultural layers and the falsification of genuine objects in the name of surrounding themselves with everything that they like are haphazard and disordered. The desire to show their features and emphasize the non-standard thinking is expressed in what can be scientifically designated as “kitsch”.

    Carpet with a tiger on the wall of the living room in the style of kitsch.

    Pseudo-luxurious kitsch in the design of the living room

  3. Design - distinguished by deliberate bad taste, which actually hides a carefully thought out image. The master designer controls the riot of the interior, preventing him from breaking through and filling the space.

    Pink kitsch living room curtains

    Only intentional designer kitsch can be considered a true interior style.

Distinctive features of "kitsch" in different interiors

Kitsch in the interior is a triumph of tastelessness. Brightness, loudness, mannerism, vulgarity - none of these definitions will reflect deeply and succinctly the contents of the concept. This is not a demonstration of bad taste, but rather a parody, a claim to originality, a challenge to the familiar, a provocation of public opinion.

Variegated wall with a picture in the living room of a conflicting style

Indoors, everything should be excessive - color, decorations and furniture

Variegated pillows on a sofa with a colorful blanket

Often there is an excess of decorative pillows, soft toys or artificial flowers.

This style has no rules, no system, no common features. He expresses freedom and triumphs from its splendor. Pseudo-historicism is a worthy alternative and competes with modern reality. This is a cartoon for style, a kind of parody, shocking and introducing confusion in the usual attitude to life.

Kitsch in the living room of a modern apartment is the most common. It is the living rooms and studio rooms that are most suitable. Combining many functions, rooms turn into assemblies of a wide variety of things and objects.

Paintings on white walls with images of different animals

Many consider this style a parody of luxury and wealthy life.

Kitsch Design Bedroom

Here we see a parody of the romantic interior of the bedroom - instead of carved elements, the bed is decorated with plastic decorations

Interior design in the style of kitsch can affect the kitchen, nursery or bedroom, but rarely. At home, any room will turn into kitsch if you try hard.

The interior of the youth bedroom in kitsch style.

In a teenager’s room, a rebellious spirit can appear as graffiti on the walls

Kitsch bedroom interior with yellow walls

Bedroom with a “flashy” coloring of walls and ceiling in the style of kitsch for people who just need to break all conceivable rules

The main signs that in front of you is an interior in the style of kitsch:

  • fountain of the house;
  • columns and balusters in an apartment with low ceilings, stucco molding and busts;
  • all kinds of imitations "under":
    - under a tree (plastic),
    - marbled (linoleum),
    - under crystal (glass),
    - under the skin (dermantine),
    - under gold (gilding),
    - "antique", etc .;
  • reproductions of famous paintings, nearby - posters, posters, vinyl records;
  • carpets.

The symbolic archetype of kitsch style in the interior can be considered a pink pillow, decorated with hand embroidery, lying on a green armchair made of plastic, which stands under a Renaissance picture hanging on a wall from uncut logs.

Kitsch color scheme

Lilac, pink, deep yellow - in the living room there is a typical color palette for kitsch

Kitsch style room decoration

This room is simply littered with accessories that create the necessary chaos.

Style is not “carried away” by creative searches and finds, its destiny is ready-made samples, recognizable and popular, banal and widespread. The mechanism of aesthetic impact is in the analogy that the unconscious draws between what the rich have (according to ideas and experience) and what is at home.

Modern kitsch living room with posters on the ceiling.

All the colors of the rainbow were mixed here, and posters with bright drawings were used to decorate the ceiling.

How to “make” a home interior

Creating kitsch at home is not easy and not difficult - desire and funds will help in this. It is worth taking a closer look at furniture and walls, decoration and accessories: which of them blends and harmonizes with each other, and which frankly contradicts? To enhance contrasts by moving them closer or placing them side by side, or to make bright accents on a dull monophonic background, is not enough. We need new, original ideas - gizmos found at flea markets and antique shops.

Incomprehensible drawings on the wall and ceiling of the living room

The interior in the style of kitsch can be “fashioned” from almost any material

Bright pillows screaming colors on a dark brown sofa

The choice of materials and decoration is limited only by the imagination of the designer

Combining incongruous is the surest way to achieve interior design in this style.

Custom armchair

In the living room you can put a chair of unthinkable colors

Classic sofa with pink upholstery

Or a large pink sofa with plastic legs - a parody of rich leather furniture with forged elements

Design Methods:

  • paint the walls with spray paint from spray cans using different colors;
  • to cover part of the floor with ceramic tiles in oriental style;
  • put on the floor carpet, consisting of several pieces of different colors;
  • put large pots with palm perennials near the walls;
  • make stucco inserts or imitations of columns on the walls;
  • hang plastic curtains and put up screens;
  • make partitions from light decorative materials inside one room, etc.

In general, the kitsch style in the interior is more suitable for youth housing. The older generation will instantly create a landfill and a bunch of old things at home, and young people will ensure that all that is old is thrown away and replaced with a new one in a timely manner. The negative side also has a right to exist. Everyone has their own idea of ​​the beauty of life. The pleasure of refuting the usual authorities sometimes even prevails over the inconvenience of life.

Yellow pillows on a light gray sofa

True kitsch is thoughtful disharmony, ridicule and irony.

Purple cover on a chair near the fireplace

Kitsch may like or cause rejection, but in any case, this style is impressive

Such a style is an integral part of modern culture. It is considered a combination of classic, country and futurism. The leading trend of the crisis era has every chance to turn into a full-fledged hyperstyle of art. A certain neo-version of Mannerism, kitsch operates with the usual things taken out of their context and placed in the exact opposite. This is the first sign that the culture of the world is increasingly turning into a culture of consumption.

Video: Kitsch as a Home Improvement Philosophy

Photo: 50 kitsch interiors

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