Pinterest Panic
Choosing what style your home will be? Now that is a nightmare.
Soho House Amsterdam via houseandgarden.co.uk
You have all been there, haven’t you? I mean, spending hours of sleepless nights on Pinterest just perpetually scrolling and pinning. Your Pinterest board, “Home Ideas”, literally has 1549 pins and counting. This is why being a house is nice (as I am one), as I just sit there watching the Lady Owner at night, her eyes glued on the phone screen. As a house, I don’t have to do the hard work looking for interior design inspirations.
LO—a.k.a Lady Owner—moved here with tons of ideas in her head but zero commitment. She didn’t really know what she wanted. She really did not know. Sometimes she was enamoured by the idea of color explosions (I’m sure you remember her previous living room), patterns on patterns, etc. Think a London townhouse, designed by the likes of Rita Konig. Moreover LO did live in London. It’s natural for her to dream about purple wisteria at the door, and for her to believe that she is a maximalist.
She was, in a way.
Then again, sometimes, she wanted Japandi. Modern lines. A lot of whites and not much else. Or an extra artsy industrial loft, artsy but somehow minimal, which is actually still her dream home (maybe someday). Hence the many sleepless nights on Pinterest cursing Shea McGee.
Obviously, it is hard to be a minimalist with a toddler, two cats, about 1000 books, and various trinkets from years of travels. So she compromised and became neither. Or both. Depends on your point of view. A little bit of grand millennial, a little dash of wabisabi (not due to philosophical beliefs, but just laziness on LO’s part), modern eclectic, etc. Nowadays, if you ask LO what her interior design style is, she will say: Soho House Amsterdam on a (tight) budget.
Because let’s admit it, who wouldn’t fall in love with Soho House? So far, LO has never visited a Soho House, doesn’t plan to become a member either in the near (or far) future, but she has been in Amsterdam so many times and loves the city albeit the weed aroma reeking in its every corner. According to many articles, the designers of Soho House Amsterdam took inspirations from the old Dutch masters’ color palette, so LO decided to also go from there.
Here, in Dordrecht, where I was built and still am, we have our own old Dutch master: Aelbert Cuyp, who is known for his landscapes (think a lot of golden sunsets). Moreover, LO wants to respect the year I was built as well, which means she can experiment with art deco elements, jewel tones, and so forth. In short, so very Soho House, except naturally not a single furniture was purchased via Soho Home. Also naturally LO is most probably far less talented than those Soho designers are.
A bedroom in Soho House Amsterdam, via sohohouseamsterdam.com
Being on a tight budget but wanting aesthetics a la Soho House means mixing heirloom furnitures and your classic IKEA pieces with things obtained from secondhand and antique stores. Luckily, this is Dordrecht, the oldest city in South Holland, so there is no shortage of them. ;)
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