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15 Interior Design “Turn-Ons” That Might Inspire You
Interview With Expert
We all have an idea of what the inside of our dream home looks like. Some prefer straightforward, minimalist interior designs. Others, like these two TikTok influencers, want a unique feel to make their personalities stand out.
Ethan Gaskill and Robert Gigliotti shared their “home decor turn-ons” in a recent series of videos, and we’ve compiled some of them into this list. They involve unexpected art placements, bulky furniture centerpieces, and “intentional clutter.”
Was that a head-scratcher? Scroll through to see what I mean. And who knows? A few of these may even inspire you with new furnishing ideas.
Keep scrolling to find our interview with Philippines-based interior designer Lea Maris De Guzman, who shared her insights about niche home decor.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I'm sick of the white walls. Let's bring bold color back in. Even if you're just changing up your white walls to a warmer white, beige.
I like beige. I love it. I painted my hallway a copper color, my living room this citrusy, yellowy color. My bedroom's green. My bathroom's chocolate brown.
I really am debating painting my other bathroom like a cherry apple red. I just think it's so fun. Life's short. Paint, yeah, it's like $50 and takes a little bit of time. But, honestly, putting music on, dancing while doing it, and just having fun, in the worst case, you paint it back.
And if your landlord says you can't paint, tell them 'sorry, not sorry' and paint. You can always paint it back to white or just hope for the best. They repaint it usually anyway. Yeah. Also, if you're gonna paint, I love the paint drenching, painting your ceiling, painting your trim.
I think that looks really cool. Our friendship started because Ethan painted his ceiling yellow, and I was caught by it. It caught my attention. Who knew painting your ceiling would give you the best friend for the rest of your life? Literally. So see what happens when you paint your walls.
Woodsie 4 months ago
Yes, just go ahead and paint your rented accommodation a rainbow of colours and just leave it up to your landlord to fix when you leave. Bright colours are not always easy fixed by a couple of coasts of white paint. If you want to paint bright colours do it in your own home. I have nothing against bright colours, my own home has blue, green and yellow walls but it is my house.
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#2
These big, bulky wooden furniture pieces. Like a creator we really like, Paige Wassel, also said, like, get furniture that you could stand on. Obviously, there's furniture that should be delicate for a reason, but these, like, sturdy, high-quality pieces are just beautiful. They make a statement. Usually, you can do a lot of storage in them.
Never. It'll never go out of style. It feels like something you'd have in, like, your home growing up, like an heirloom piece of furniture.
#3
Textured glass. I really like that, but there's so many different ones that I think people should play with more often. Maybe a shower door that has texture on it, cabinet doors. And I think now, because homes are so close together and you're always just looking in someone else's living room, maybe adding some textured glass could be really beautiful on those spaces that are like those sidewalls where you're just like watching your neighbor eat dinner.
And what's really cool about this is the way that light filters through this type of glass as well. So it makes for very picturesque and beautiful ethereal lighting moments in your home.
What exactly is niche home decor? Lea describes it as a way of expressing one’s special interests through interior design.
“It could be that you're trying to have the aesthetic of a country club vibe, wabi sabi, or a certain look or philosophy,” she told Bored Panda.
#4
Unexpected art placement. And this is something that isn't new. In fact, I've seen quite a few other content creators talk about this. It makes a home feel so much more eclectic and special and just is a lot more visually interesting than centering artwork over the precise middle point on a mantel or a dresser or a nightstand.
At your house, how you have a piece of artwork in between the two windows in your living room. You can't plan for this. I don't think you can look at that spot and be like, you need it.
But sometimes it just works. Play around, hold your art pieces in different places, and you never know. I don't know, like, right over a light switch or something like that, over a nightstand versus over the headboard.
AllRightyNowThen 4 months ago
Meh.... Maybe, but if it's so out of balance that it is unsettling, then your house becomes unsettling.
#5
Corten steel. There's an artist, Richard Serra, who makes beautiful sculptures out of this, but this has been used in architecture, a lot of modern architecture, for a while. And I just think it's so beautiful, and I'm calling it now.
We're gonna be seeing this in lighting coming up. We've seen chrome. Chrome had a big thing. Gold, silver, but we aren't going into this. I mean, I love copper. This gives copper energy.
It gives a very unique edge to a space, but also kind of has like an antique look to it too. I think it could work with a lot of different styles. It's like new but old at the same time, which is really cool.
#6
My turn-on is that old-money country club aesthetic. I feel like this aesthetic really hits the nail on the head when it comes to everything that I love in a good interior.
There are beautiful, rich greens and reds and blues, dark woods that you just know are so well made and so well utilized. It's timeless, and you see a lot of high-quality metals being used in this environment as well. And I think that really is just what I like so much about it, as you can tell. It's like rich, it has character. Even the faucets, I get from this vibe, are the ones with the little porcelain additions, or those showerheads with all the hardware exposed, and it's all simple but elevated.
A lot of the designs you see posted on this list are out of the ordinary. While it can be aesthetically satisfying for the person who came up with the design, Lea says maintaining it could be an issue in the future.
She used minimalist designs as an example, and the potential challenges a homeowner can face once toddlers enter the picture.
#7
I love intentional or organized clutter. Some people like their house to look like a showroom or a museum where there's, like, almost no signs of life. But I am someone who takes so much pride in the things that I use, like my perfumes, the books that I read, coffee cups, jewelry. I like to kind of scatter these things. Not literally just throw them around my apartment.
But as I use them, I leave them out because I think that they speak to my personality, and it's just something that in a way is kind of indirectly decor. Well, I think he's really good at this. If you've seen our ick videos, I kinda mentioned displaying, like, toiletries and stuff like that. I think I mean more of if you are hanging up shelves specifically to show off your nail polishes or skin care products.
There's a fine line between clutter and then also leaving your reading glasses out or your book or your journal or whatever it is.
He's really good at this. I wanna get better at that. I'm a Virgo, so I need things like pristine, my fruit bowl with the fruit in a specific way.
Piggybacking on what he says, he has a lot of beautiful items, and that's kinda something I'm into right now, or have been for the past few years because I've always been a collector, and I'm getting you on it. It's kinda like curating everything. This is especially great if you can't afford furniture or art pieces. Going to the thrift stores and finding the mini stuff. I want my drawers of silverware not to just be Target, streamline, all silver, all gold.
Like, I want mix and match. I want different fun stuff. I also love the concept of, like, exactly what you're saying, because as design trends change, or you wanna transition from one style to another if your home is kind of this, like, quilt, for example, of a lot of different styles and items and things. Not like, 'Oh, I'm going from, like, farmhouse into a super modern Scandinavian home.' It's like your home's eclectic.
You can kind of always let it evolve. And when the items in your space are sourced from a lot of different places, but it's always like things you really love, it's easy to kind of keep transforming your space without having to get rid of, like, everything and go buy a bunch of new stuff all at once.
Cool crow 4 months ago
My system, and it always works, is to go with what I like. It may not be someone else's style, and my taste may be unusual, but I'm the one who has to like it. For instance, I have beautiful fake flowers on the coffee table (since xmas). I've grown to appreciate my own style and I know I really like other peoples' unique styles.
#8
Handmade pottery. I have been having the time of my life at thrift stores finding the coolest handmade pottery. I don't care if it's like a bowl, a sculpture. I even found like a tea kettle recently. It's like red, white, and blue. Definitely someone's 4th grade, like, art project, but it's in my home now, and it feels special and fun.
It gives them another life.
#9
This color. I've been kind of debating on what the color actually is. It's sort of like a chartreuse, chardonnay, green, yellow. My bedding is this color. My ceiling, I painted this color. I also painted my dining room a color similar to this recently, but it's great. It's so warm, and it's timeless.
I recently toured a mid-century home in LA, the Schindler House, and they had these screen doors, which were this color. It makes a statement, but it's also very versatile and earthy but bold.
But if the design becomes too eccentric, when does a designer intervene for quality control? Lea says it’s about finding that balance between functionality and making the homeowner’s vision come to life.
“Our role as designers is to ensure that the space remains practical and harmonious,” she explained.
#10
Starting off with a color combo I've been loving a lot recently. I actually found a baby photo of my mom and I, and I saw this color scheme in it.
And then there's also this Instagram account I followed recently of a photographer, Pepe Lobez, and he does this whole series on blue and red, specifically this powder blue. It's not super patriotic, but, I mean, I guess red and blue is. But when it's done tastefully, it just looks so beautiful. I wish this would work in my home. I wanna find a place to do this in, but I just really love the way it looks. It does look so good.
PeepPeep the duck 4 months ago
Powder blue and red, remind me of French dresses back in the olden olden days with crinolines etc
#11
I've been loving darker stones, darker tiles, darker woods. I think it just adds a richness, a warmth.
I think darker stones on a bathroom countertop, kitchen countertop is beautiful. I do like light stone, but I think play with this. It just makes the place feel homey, warm.
#12
Use a bed cover. And so I talked about this before. And, like, now that the warm weather is rolling around the corner, I just love this like effortless European look. Some people call it 'grandmacore' bedding because apparently, a lot of our grandmothers made beds this way.
You could have any sheets, any pillow covers, and you just throw a bedspread on. If grandmas have been doing it for a while, it's obviously a good idea because they obviously know what's up.
If your niche home decor involves cultural pieces, Lea has one important piece of advice: “Ensure you’re appreciating, not appropriating.”
She emphasizes doing prior research on the style you’re going for. It should help you better understand and show respect for its origins.
#13
My next turn-on is mixing materials, and this is something that a lot of interior designers and decorators have talked about forever, but I recently have really experienced the beauty of it when done really well.
Having a mixture of materials like this really just makes a space feel sort of unexpected and brings a lot of balance so that everything's not just like one type of wood or one color, but adds variety. And it feels more special than if you just did everything the same. Mixing textures is what's gonna make your house less flat, look less like a staging house, just bringing in different things. Same applies to fashion.
#14
Tiled furniture. And there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. And the wrong way is, like, that sort of trendy urban checkerboard tiled furniture.
I love tile on beautiful vintage heirloom pieces of furniture, like heavy wood furniture that is contrasted with stunning tiles. They're on the front face of, like, a cabinet or on top of a coffee table. There's just really cool tiles being used. I was actually at an estate sale a couple weeks ago and saw a coffee table that I almost bought.
The silhouette of the coffee table wasn't exactly the right fit for my space, but the wood tone was so gorgeous. And, honestly, the tile is what made it. Like, if it just had a plain wood surface, it would have been far less interesting. This is a perfect example that there's a trendy way to do things, and there's an exception to every rule.
#15
Unique art framing. I think something that you can do that's super easy that I've done is just painting the mat of your frame, with any existing picture you have. I found these like really cool steel frames in Palm Springs. I printed some baby photos of my partner and I, put them in there, and I love the way it came out.
I also found this artist, @em_kettner. Their work is beautiful. Just, it's like big blocks of wood with a picture inside of it. But I don't know. Just get playful. There's just so much you can do with, like, things you already have that can make your space feel so much more elevated and intentional.
Functionality should still be your top priority, and Lea reminds us to focus on usability and avoiding clutter. You can achieve both aesthetics and practicality at the same time.
If you are stumped on how to proceed, Lea advises consulting a professional. They could help you realize your vision while maintaining balance and harmony in your space.
What do you think ?
Anxiousguest 4 months ago
Glad that I'm not the only one who felt that way. I hated every single one of this
Load More Replies...
Diane Hughes 4 months ago
This guy is like a teenager in his speaking style and his taste. All the pics are ugly and I couldn't possibly take him seriously.
Anxiousguest 4 months ago
Glad that I'm not the only one who felt that way. I hated every single one of this
Load More Replies... Diane Hughes 4 months ago
This guy is like a teenager in his speaking style and his taste. All the pics are ugly and I couldn't possibly take him seriously.
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