Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.
It’s about how it works. – Steve Jobs
One of Steve Jobs’ mantras was about focus and simplicity. He said “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
But what do Apple Macs and iPhones have to do with you and your home? Absolutely everything! When we consider interior design, it’s vital to consider form and function. When designing technology or updating his products (always with the updating!), Jobs always considered both of these factors. Similarly, when look for design inspiration or updating your space, it’s an important part of the creative process to contemplate what you want your home to look like and feel like and how best you can utilise the space available to you.
Every space in your home demands different considerations. To help get your creative juices flowing, we’ve put together 9 easy ways to update your space. Not many of them are cheap, but when did that stop Apple selling you the latest iPhone for $1000? You enjoy your phone’s look, feel and function everyday. You deserve to feel the same way about your living environment.
These are our favourite ideas on how to update your indoor and outdoor living spaces and, as a homage to Jobs’s love of technology, your office space as well.
Update your indoor living space
Before you go channelling Apple for everything, keep in mind that updating your indoor living area doesn’t necessarily need to be about modernising it. It’s about taking the things you love and making them work for you. So if you love contemporary stylings and furniture, it may be about adding an indoor garden or mounting an expressive piece of wall art.
1. Add an indoor garden
2. Mount expressive wall art
You might even consider adding a new coat of paint, but new doesn’t need to mean painting everything atrium white. If you want your living space to feel warm and cosy and you love carpet, choose a warm and cosy wall colour like this smokey blue, below, and decorate with earthy tones.
3. Use bold colours
4. Be brave with wallpaper
If you are fearless about art deco, honour your walls with a statement wallpaper.
Update your outdoor living space
When updating your outdoor living space, when it comes to landscaping, many of us automatically think form and function; form being what types of plants are selected and where they look best, and function being essentials like retaining walls and garden beds.
When it comes to updating your outdoor space DIY style, YouTube’s got you covered. Here’s a video tutorial on how to turn a pallet into a vertical garden – when horizontal gardens are either impossible or just not enough!
5. Make a vertical garden
6. Turn your outdoors lime green
But to truly update your outdoor space, it’s time to think ‘furniture’. It’s time to think ‘colour’. It’s time to give back to the beautiful outdoors that gives back to you, day in day out. Watch out natural plant life, lime green furniture is coming through!
7. Relax in a hanging chair
Move over gumnut babies, we’ve got a comfy hanging chair for the humans on its way!
Update your office space
In case you thought we’d completely dishonour the Steve Jobs name and completely forget about sexy technology, let’s step back inside and take a look around the home office. Regardless of whether your office is a permanent workplace, where you run a part-time home business or simply the place you sort your bills, like every other space in your home it deserves form and function. It does not deserve junk and clutter.
Colouring your office does not need to be about painting gregarious colours on your walls. Whites and greys and lighter tones do add a sense of class and professionalism. But that certainly doesn’t need to mean boring. To give your office some life, add an inspiration wall. To make it a place of calm rather than stress, go mad at your local stationery store and go a bit Zen with a wall art print.
8. Create a Zen office
9. Find a nifty office nook
If you don’t have a dedicated room for an office, you can choose versatile space in your home and jazz it up with a nifty office nook.
It doesn’t matter if you are a PC or Mac person or a Samsung or iPhone stalwart, form and function are two key elements of design that, when considered, can help us create a home that gives us joy, wonder, ease and comfort every day of our lives. Own your space. Be daring. Steve Jobs wouldn’t want it any other way.
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.” – Steve Jobs
