How to create a loft style with your own hands and at minimal cost

The loft appeared in the 40s of the last century in New York. Rising rental prices have forced many businesses to leave their Manhattan premises and move to the suburbs. Bohemians have chosen huge squares in the city center. Artists transformed former factory halls into workshops, galleries and film studios. Here they created, demonstrated their art and celebrated without stopping – after all, they lived here. This is how this style was formed.

Why “loft”? From English this word is translated as “attic”. The spaces are organized according to the attic principle: there are almost no interior partitions and complex finishes in them. But there is the spirit of a big city, space, light and air – the legacy of the factory, under 200-300 sq. m, spaciousness with 5-meter ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows in wide brick walls.

Is there a pure loft style now outside of interior exhibitions and design magazine spreads? It is unlikely, because not every apartment looks like a former factory. But in the loft, creativity is encouraged, and with it anything is possible.

Imitation brick is an important element of the loft style. In large rooms on load-bearing walls, decorative bricks for interior decoration are acceptable. Otherwise, wallpaper imitating red or white brick is suitable. This is the most economical solution, while the quality of modern wallpaper allows you to achieve realism.

Not all walls should be bricked. To create the atmosphere of a loft, it is enough to select one wall in this way, and make the rest in a neutral color. For the loft style, gray wallpaper imitating a concrete surface is especially suitable.

The loft offers two main floor solutions: concrete and aged wood.

For spacious, light rooms, a concrete floor will be a stylish solution. This effect is easy to achieve with porcelain stoneware, PVC tiles or concrete-look laminate. A less economical, but also a good solution is a gray self-leveling floor. A more budget solution can be gray linoleum or carpet.

If the room is small, choose a wooden floor – parquet, laminate, or any wood-imitating materials. It is important to remember that you should choose an aged tree for a loft; and the darker the room, the lighter the floor should be.

Stretch ceilings categorically contradict the industrial look of the loft. But what is hidden underneath is the perfect loft-style ceiling: gray, concrete, with wiring details, handwritten numbers, engineering fixtures and holes.

In large rooms, the elements of the ventilation system – pipes and hoods – will also be appropriate on the ceiling. In an apartment, the same effect can be achieved by attaching wires to an untreated ceiling. If the ceiling without finishing looks too technical for your taste, you can even out the color with translucent white paint, through which the original concrete texture will be visible.

Loft-style lighting is a minimalist fixture, often designed as spotlights in a steel casing, reminiscent of technical lighting fixtures. A good solution for a loft would be to install multiple spotlights on a steel ceiling rail. This will allow you to selectively illuminate different parts of the room, emphasizing the division into zones.

Designers advise to play with contrasts and hang a classic chandelier on the loft ceiling in addition to industrial-style lamps or other modern lighting fixtures. For example, it can be floor lamps on a metal frame or spotlights on a tripod.

The most affordable type of loft-style furniture is minimalistic shelving. But finding other furniture that will harmoniously fit into the style is difficult in stores, so it is often made to order. Optimal loft-style furniture is built around a roughly welded and dark painted steel frame. It is appropriate to decorate sofas with pillows in covers made of leather or coarse matting. Countertops are usually made of wood.

An affordable option for loft-style furniture can be neutral classic furniture. For example, a large gray sofa will perfectly fit into an industrial style. It can be supported by colored upholstered furniture in deep and muted shades: for example, a retro shade of yellow-orange or deep blue. For a coffee table, use a black iron table with a wooden top, they are also easy to find.

Allow yourself an antique sideboard in your living room as an accent. It will highlight the modernity of the loft. Do not forget to light up the sideboard favorably with the built-in lighting, and also direct one of the floodlights of the suspended ceiling system at it.

Speaking about loft-style decor, it is important to remember that this style was created by creative, bright and sometimes contradictory natures. Therefore, any object of contemporary art can become an adornment of this style. Particular preference should be given to modern painting – abstract paintings or works in the style of pop art. You should not insert the canvases of modern masters into heavy and pompous frames. On the contrary, it is better to hang pictures without frames or simply use canvases – the so-called canvases.

Bright colors look great in industrial interiors and can and should be used. Take 2-3 colors of the main palette and use them in the design of cushions, throws, vases and flower pots – your efforts will be rewarded with a sense of harmony and comfort.

Graphic and industrial posters will look great on the walls too. It is better to hang photos compositionally, that is, to collect several pictures at once on one section of the wall – ideally if they are in simple thin black or steel frames.

Carefully and with a sense of proportion, approach the choice of indoor plants. If there are too many plants, it will destroy the very idea of ​​an industrial space. Not every flower or plant will look organic in a loft-style interior. For example, orchids and ferns will look alien. But cacti and large exotic plants like monstera will easily fit in. Its irregularly shaped leaves with holes are often used in decorative prints, and combining a living plant with this decor will look great in a loft.

Choose pots with simple geometric shapes. The color of the pot can be bright, like other accents in the interior, or it can be neutral – for example, in “Leroy Merlin” you can find stylish gray pots made of unpainted concrete.

A loft is a versatile style that can be used to decorate an entire home. An industrial interior can even be created in a nursery, combining a wooden floor, white brick walls and black iron structures of a sports corner. In the kitchen, you can use concrete facades for furniture, wallpaper for white brick or concrete. And choose a tabletop, a mixer and lamps with warm retro lamps in black. A stylish solution for the bathroom will be the continuation of the concrete theme in the wall and floor tiles. Alternatively, you can decorate the walls with white tiles or mosaics, rubbed with black grout. Combining it with black faucets and a heated towel rail, as well as a mirror in a black frame and a shower stall with a black tray and screen, you can achieve very interesting solutions.

It’s important to understand that a loft doesn’t have to be the only style in your home. Feel free to combine it with one or two additional styles – this is not only acceptable, but also desirable if you strive to create a cozy and suitable interior for you. And this can be done without the help of a designer – it is enough to study examples of stylish interior solutions on the web and creatively translate their basic principles into reality.