The venerable age of civilization in China determines the isolation of a unique Chinese culture. Although China supported trade with neighboring states, it never borrowed anything from strangers. Chinese culture, architecture and design delighted Europeans who are addicted to the exotic of antiquity. This led to a fashion for oriental household items, which since the end of the 17th century has spread to all countries. The love of Chinese culture was called chinoiserie and instantly spread among architects, artists, and even cooks and tailors.
In Europe, Chinese products became fashionable in the 18th century. In rich houses, expensive Chinese porcelain was collected, the poor also decorated their homes with exotic Chinese crafts.In the 18th century, the English furniture master Thomas Chippendale began to actively introduce elements of the interior Chinese style into his furniture - lattices, decorative trims, etc.
A little later, the three-thousand-year-old Taoist doctrine of feng shui reached the receptive to the whole new European minds, which set as its goal to find in space and use the flow of qi energy for the benefit of human health. The system of 5 elements, developed by philosophers and sages, classified everything that surrounds a person, including the person himself. The attributes of the elements calculated the degree of harmony in a particular room and calculated ways to increase it.
Of course, one cannot sideways mix the rich Chinese culture of arranging living space only with the teachings of Feng Shui. They influenced her and historical events. For example, 2 famous dynasties of the Chinese rulers Qing and Ming left their mark on the design of palaces and houses. If the Qing style is characterized by a warm palette and massive decor, then the Ming style is more minimalistic and restrained. It is in it that red, black, white colors that have become traditional for China prevail.
The basis of modern Chinese style is the idea of the unity of opposites, maintaining balance, the Yin / Yang fusion and the harmonious coexistence of light and darkness.
Distinctive features
What elements of the Chinese style will not make a mistake in identifying it:
only rounded soft lines, if sharp corners are found, it is extremely rare;
key materials - bamboo, hardwood (originally sandalwood), marble (used for countertops), silk and, of course, ceramics are abundant - figurines, flowerpots, dishes;
traditional Chinese decor is embodied in calligraphy, large and small sculptures of Buddhas and animals made of natural stone, lacquer painting, natural Chinese carpets, and works of national painting;
in zoning, screens or lattices made of bamboo painted with plot pictures are used;
straightforward and simple furniture is designed to serve the basic needs of the owner. However, it is made from precious wood, then decorated with national ornaments and varnished.
As for the colors, they are selected depending on the functionality of the room:
red symbolizes the masculine beginning;
black is considered a symbol of rebirth, which means - the feminine;
white - a symbol of immortality, purity and eternity;
yellow represents power;
green is energy.
Who will suit
The Chinese style in the interior is the choice of peaceful, at the same time conservative and extraordinary people. It is suitable for lovers of bright colors, sophisticated connoisseurs of philosophy, creative people. Those who appreciate luxury and exotic oriental accessories will be happy to bring it to their homes.
Colors and finishes
The design of the Chinese interior is conducive to the introduction of bold colors. One of the most favorite colors in the Middle Kingdom is red. The Chinese believe that red is the color of well-being, a color that brings good luck. As accent colors, golden, yellow, blue can be used.
However, nothing bad will happen if you decide that red will act excitingly on you. Instead, you can arrange a brown background that goes well with cream, beige and milk shades. Such colors are often found in modern interiors of the Celestial Empire. The rest of the housing must comply with the canons of the house style - a minimum of simple but expensive furniture, a sufficient amount of colorful decor.
Floor
The main requirement for Chinese-style floors is laconicism and simplicity, which is successfully expressed in materials such as light wood or ceramic tiles. A rich Chinese red carpet is required in the front room and in the bedroom.However, the decoration of the floor in the living room is not limited to the red carpet.
China’s carpet weaving is more than two and a half thousand years old. Carpet weaving from China came to other countries of the world (to India, for example). The most beautiful silk and wool carpets were made by craftsmen manually. The special decor is always distinguished by carpets from the Celestial Empire: dragons and lotus flowers, symbols of Yin and Yang, herons, tigers, hieroglyphs and various floral ornaments.
Walls
The possibilities of decorating the walls in an oriental-style apartment are as diverse as possible. Modern manufacturers of finishing materials produce a whole line of matching wallpaper in the Chinese style. The traditional approach to the interior in the Middle Kingdom is based on the laws of Feng Shui. Harmony comes to the house through the style of decoration - as the main Chinese treatise says.
The home should always be well lit - so the wallpaper comes in light colors. Create them from natural materials: bleached paper, bamboo. Wallpaper patterns have many details, as they are created specifically for continuous contemplation:
the yin-yang sign brings harmony and tranquility to the house;
spectacular dragon means wisdom and good;
images of plants and trees are actively exploited in the decoration: bamboo leaves, bonsai, sakura blossoms - unchanged images in the decoration;
hieroglyphs are often used for decoration - they are elegant and sometimes bear a philosophical meaning.
It is not necessary to glue wallpaper on the wall. Painting walls in light shades is also quite a popular option for the Chinese interior. One thing ... Walls should be richly decorated. A frequent Chinese-style wall decoration is huge Chinese silk carpets with a small ornate pattern. They contain genre and plot scenes from the life of the Chinese, images of animals and even poetry. Often found in the homes of nobles and wood panels with delicate carvings.
However, a rather expensive silk decor has been successfully replaced by the equally popular wall painting. The history of Chinese painting goes back centuries to 8 thousand years. Religious wall paintings spread in China during the Han and Qin Dynasty. And in the Tang era, the first domestic plots began to appear.
The subjects for decoration can be very different: hieroglyphs, mountains, fancy trees and flowering plants, dragons and birds, pagodas, natural phenomena. The dominant color on the walls remains red and yellow - these are the colors of fire that embody inspiration and development. For more restrained designs, you can use shades of brown. In feng shui, walls in such colors will attract wealth and good fortune into the house.
The ceilings
Of course, in a modern home you can use the usual stretch simple and smooth fabric ceiling. If you wish, you can apply a Chinese-style image to it - blooming sakura, a dragon, or several characters. Such a ceiling will create the necessary mood and complement the style.
You can give preference to a plasterboard ceiling, with which you can also create multi-level structures. A very important rule for a Chinese-style ceiling is symmetry. Even a multi-level design must be symmetrical.
To emphasize the specifics of the style, lamps in the form of light white balls from rice paper (or imitation) will help. You can place them on ceiling levels, combining them with modern, more efficient spot lighting. You can buy large Chinese wooden lamps with painted glass inserts and decorated with red tassels and fringe in specialized stores selling products from the East.
Furniture
Furniture in China has been created for centuries and inherited. Therefore, there were 2 types of furniture - cheaper bamboo (although the poorest peasants and artisans did not use furniture at all in China,and lived on mats) and more expensive - simple in form, but made of expensive wood. Today, furniture can be made from inexpensive species and lined with maple, cherry, oak.
Regardless of the simple form of the furniture, it was necessarily painted by masters manually or decorated with carvings. The painting usually contained genre scenes, images of birds or historical events. Dark red, black, dark green - the main background colors for furniture.
A prerequisite for the arrangement of furniture remains the principle of symmetry, for the expression of which paired items were purchased. A table with 2 chairs on each side symbolized love, happiness and prosperity. If paintings or silk carpets hang in the room, then a table with a pair of chairs was also placed under them.
Cabinets in the rooms were also installed in pairs opposite each other. The facades of the cabinets were specially made clean so that there was an opportunity to give free rein to the artist's imagination. Images on cabinets were often benevolent: for example, a blossoming peach tree meant a wish for longevity, a dragon - power, peony flowers - nobility.
To create an authentic atmosphere in the office, you can buy a calligraphy table in a specialized store (usually such stylized furniture is in antique stores). Usually it is equipped with a special inclined panel. Frequent pieces of furniture in the Chinese style - wide beds with a small tea table on curved low legs. All that is possible - tables, tables, chests of drawers, shelving decorated with vases with flowers.
Accessories and Textiles
The peculiarity of the style lies in the fact that for a long time curtains and drapes were not popular in China. The windows inside were decorated with frequent partitions with ornate-intricate details. Curtains hung only on the bottom of the window. There was a period when the windows were simply closed from the inside with the finest rice paper.Modern Chinese-style curtains should not create obstacles to sunlight. Translucent, expensive, very simple cut, they should just flow down. No lambrequins should be here.
The walls, however, were decorated with the finest scarlet silk, red carpets flaunted on the floors, and low furniture was decorated with shining gold pillows. Textile accessories can play the role of color accents. Pillows could be blue, yellow or green with black or gold patterns. Textiles can also be attributed to screens covered with the finest painted fabric, which serve to delimit zones in the room.
Chinese living room
The Chinese-style living room is the front room for receiving guests. Everything here should be rich, beautiful and solemn. For floors, light parquet or laminate under a tree is suitable. The walls are glued with bamboo or paper wallpaper with drawings from traditional Chinese painting. The decoration with wood panels and even bamboo canvases fits perfectly into the ceremonial formal style.
There should be a minimal amount of furniture. It is important to maintain the spaciousness of the room. The best option is a low tea table, a small sofa, elegant shelves or racks with vases and other accessories, chairs with soft seats and a couple of chairs. As the finishing touches, the room needs to be filled with decor that will make it original and original. A cult thing for the Chinese interior is the aquarium. If in the home pond the Chinese breed koi carps, then in the aquarium their analogues usually swim - goldfish. With the help of exquisite porcelain little things, bells, paintings with hieroglyphs, you will bring a special touch to your interior.
Kitchen Design
For a small kitchen, wall decoration can be chosen in light colors - light beige or cream, which does not exclude the presence of important style colors - red and black.Dark red furniture facades and a black kitchen apron perfectly emphasize the interests of the owner in the eastern direction. Stone countertops will fit well into the interior of the kitchen.
The Chinese-style kitchen just has to have a lot of decor. It can be statues of Buddhas or animals, tea sets, lanterns from tissue paper, painted vases with flowers. By the way, artificial sakura twigs enliven the interior. The narrow painted paintings with Chinese landscapes and poetic quatrains will look good on the walls.
Bedroom
Making a bedroom in the Chinese style is not easy. The thing is that traditional beds in China are literally a room in a room. They have their roof and fencing along the edges, covered with rich textiles and guarantee complete privacy to the sleeping person. Such a bed is often in the center of the room. Of course, to realize such a luxury in a small room will not succeed. If it is not possible to bring the main element of style into the room, you can use a variety of decorations that emphasize its style - put a screen, blocking the place for changing clothes, hang a huge fan with the image of flying cranes over the bed. It will be useful to hang photographs or a picture depicting a lotus on the wall - the flower represents perfection and harmony.
Painted canvases are often hung above the head of the ceiling, but in modern interiors they are often replaced with glass. However, you can take this place with murals depicting dragons or crooked pines growing on top of a rocky cliff. Tall multi-colored lamps made of bamboo and rice paper and tall floor vases will fit well into the interior.
Conclusion
To create a Chinese flavor in your home with your own hands is not the easiest event, but the subsequent effect will reward the worker a hundredfold. The Chinese style is life-affirming, wise and very positive. It is soft, pleasant and very harmonious.If there is no way to create it using expensive furniture, then it is quite possible to achieve the same effect using decor, decoration and accessories.
The venerable age of civilization in China determines the isolation of a unique Chinese culture. Although China supported trade with neighboring states, it never borrowed anything from strangers. Chinese culture, architecture and design delighted Europeans who are addicted to the exotic of antiquity. This led to a fashion for oriental household items, which since the end of the 17th century has spread to all countries. The love of Chinese culture was called chinoiserie and instantly spread among architects, artists, and even cooks and tailors.
Content
History of style development
In Europe, Chinese products became fashionable in the 18th century. In rich houses, expensive Chinese porcelain was collected, the poor also decorated their homes with exotic Chinese crafts.In the 18th century, the English furniture master Thomas Chippendale began to actively introduce elements of the interior Chinese style into his furniture - lattices, decorative trims, etc.
A little later, the three-thousand-year-old Taoist doctrine of feng shui reached the receptive to the whole new European minds, which set as its goal to find in space and use the flow of qi energy for the benefit of human health. The system of 5 elements, developed by philosophers and sages, classified everything that surrounds a person, including the person himself. The attributes of the elements calculated the degree of harmony in a particular room and calculated ways to increase it.
Of course, one cannot sideways mix the rich Chinese culture of arranging living space only with the teachings of Feng Shui. They influenced her and historical events. For example, 2 famous dynasties of the Chinese rulers Qing and Ming left their mark on the design of palaces and houses. If the Qing style is characterized by a warm palette and massive decor, then the Ming style is more minimalistic and restrained. It is in it that red, black, white colors that have become traditional for China prevail.
The basis of modern Chinese style is the idea of the unity of opposites, maintaining balance, the Yin / Yang fusion and the harmonious coexistence of light and darkness.
Distinctive features
What elements of the Chinese style will not make a mistake in identifying it:
As for the colors, they are selected depending on the functionality of the room:
Who will suit
The Chinese style in the interior is the choice of peaceful, at the same time conservative and extraordinary people. It is suitable for lovers of bright colors, sophisticated connoisseurs of philosophy, creative people. Those who appreciate luxury and exotic oriental accessories will be happy to bring it to their homes.
Colors and finishes
The design of the Chinese interior is conducive to the introduction of bold colors. One of the most favorite colors in the Middle Kingdom is red. The Chinese believe that red is the color of well-being, a color that brings good luck. As accent colors, golden, yellow, blue can be used.
However, nothing bad will happen if you decide that red will act excitingly on you. Instead, you can arrange a brown background that goes well with cream, beige and milk shades. Such colors are often found in modern interiors of the Celestial Empire. The rest of the housing must comply with the canons of the house style - a minimum of simple but expensive furniture, a sufficient amount of colorful decor.
Floor
The main requirement for Chinese-style floors is laconicism and simplicity, which is successfully expressed in materials such as light wood or ceramic tiles. A rich Chinese red carpet is required in the front room and in the bedroom.However, the decoration of the floor in the living room is not limited to the red carpet.
China’s carpet weaving is more than two and a half thousand years old. Carpet weaving from China came to other countries of the world (to India, for example). The most beautiful silk and wool carpets were made by craftsmen manually. The special decor is always distinguished by carpets from the Celestial Empire: dragons and lotus flowers, symbols of Yin and Yang, herons, tigers, hieroglyphs and various floral ornaments.
Walls
The possibilities of decorating the walls in an oriental-style apartment are as diverse as possible. Modern manufacturers of finishing materials produce a whole line of matching wallpaper in the Chinese style. The traditional approach to the interior in the Middle Kingdom is based on the laws of Feng Shui. Harmony comes to the house through the style of decoration - as the main Chinese treatise says.
The home should always be well lit - so the wallpaper comes in light colors. Create them from natural materials: bleached paper, bamboo. Wallpaper patterns have many details, as they are created specifically for continuous contemplation:
It is not necessary to glue wallpaper on the wall. Painting walls in light shades is also quite a popular option for the Chinese interior. One thing ... Walls should be richly decorated. A frequent Chinese-style wall decoration is huge Chinese silk carpets with a small ornate pattern. They contain genre and plot scenes from the life of the Chinese, images of animals and even poetry. Often found in the homes of nobles and wood panels with delicate carvings.
However, a rather expensive silk decor has been successfully replaced by the equally popular wall painting. The history of Chinese painting goes back centuries to 8 thousand years. Religious wall paintings spread in China during the Han and Qin Dynasty. And in the Tang era, the first domestic plots began to appear.
The subjects for decoration can be very different: hieroglyphs, mountains, fancy trees and flowering plants, dragons and birds, pagodas, natural phenomena. The dominant color on the walls remains red and yellow - these are the colors of fire that embody inspiration and development. For more restrained designs, you can use shades of brown. In feng shui, walls in such colors will attract wealth and good fortune into the house.
The ceilings
Of course, in a modern home you can use the usual stretch simple and smooth fabric ceiling. If you wish, you can apply a Chinese-style image to it - blooming sakura, a dragon, or several characters. Such a ceiling will create the necessary mood and complement the style.
You can give preference to a plasterboard ceiling, with which you can also create multi-level structures. A very important rule for a Chinese-style ceiling is symmetry. Even a multi-level design must be symmetrical.
To emphasize the specifics of the style, lamps in the form of light white balls from rice paper (or imitation) will help. You can place them on ceiling levels, combining them with modern, more efficient spot lighting. You can buy large Chinese wooden lamps with painted glass inserts and decorated with red tassels and fringe in specialized stores selling products from the East.
Furniture
Furniture in China has been created for centuries and inherited. Therefore, there were 2 types of furniture - cheaper bamboo (although the poorest peasants and artisans did not use furniture at all in China,and lived on mats) and more expensive - simple in form, but made of expensive wood. Today, furniture can be made from inexpensive species and lined with maple, cherry, oak.
Regardless of the simple form of the furniture, it was necessarily painted by masters manually or decorated with carvings. The painting usually contained genre scenes, images of birds or historical events. Dark red, black, dark green - the main background colors for furniture.
A prerequisite for the arrangement of furniture remains the principle of symmetry, for the expression of which paired items were purchased. A table with 2 chairs on each side symbolized love, happiness and prosperity. If paintings or silk carpets hang in the room, then a table with a pair of chairs was also placed under them.
Cabinets in the rooms were also installed in pairs opposite each other. The facades of the cabinets were specially made clean so that there was an opportunity to give free rein to the artist's imagination. Images on cabinets were often benevolent: for example, a blossoming peach tree meant a wish for longevity, a dragon - power, peony flowers - nobility.
To create an authentic atmosphere in the office, you can buy a calligraphy table in a specialized store (usually such stylized furniture is in antique stores). Usually it is equipped with a special inclined panel. Frequent pieces of furniture in the Chinese style - wide beds with a small tea table on curved low legs. All that is possible - tables, tables, chests of drawers, shelving decorated with vases with flowers.
Accessories and Textiles
The peculiarity of the style lies in the fact that for a long time curtains and drapes were not popular in China. The windows inside were decorated with frequent partitions with ornate-intricate details. Curtains hung only on the bottom of the window. There was a period when the windows were simply closed from the inside with the finest rice paper.Modern Chinese-style curtains should not create obstacles to sunlight. Translucent, expensive, very simple cut, they should just flow down. No lambrequins should be here.
The walls, however, were decorated with the finest scarlet silk, red carpets flaunted on the floors, and low furniture was decorated with shining gold pillows. Textile accessories can play the role of color accents. Pillows could be blue, yellow or green with black or gold patterns. Textiles can also be attributed to screens covered with the finest painted fabric, which serve to delimit zones in the room.
Chinese living room
The Chinese-style living room is the front room for receiving guests. Everything here should be rich, beautiful and solemn. For floors, light parquet or laminate under a tree is suitable. The walls are glued with bamboo or paper wallpaper with drawings from traditional Chinese painting. The decoration with wood panels and even bamboo canvases fits perfectly into the ceremonial formal style.
There should be a minimal amount of furniture. It is important to maintain the spaciousness of the room. The best option is a low tea table, a small sofa, elegant shelves or racks with vases and other accessories, chairs with soft seats and a couple of chairs. As the finishing touches, the room needs to be filled with decor that will make it original and original.
A cult thing for the Chinese interior is the aquarium. If in the home pond the Chinese breed koi carps, then in the aquarium their analogues usually swim - goldfish. With the help of exquisite porcelain little things, bells, paintings with hieroglyphs, you will bring a special touch to your interior.
Kitchen Design
For a small kitchen, wall decoration can be chosen in light colors - light beige or cream, which does not exclude the presence of important style colors - red and black.Dark red furniture facades and a black kitchen apron perfectly emphasize the interests of the owner in the eastern direction. Stone countertops will fit well into the interior of the kitchen.
The Chinese-style kitchen just has to have a lot of decor. It can be statues of Buddhas or animals, tea sets, lanterns from tissue paper, painted vases with flowers. By the way, artificial sakura twigs enliven the interior. The narrow painted paintings with Chinese landscapes and poetic quatrains will look good on the walls.
Bedroom
Making a bedroom in the Chinese style is not easy. The thing is that traditional beds in China are literally a room in a room. They have their roof and fencing along the edges, covered with rich textiles and guarantee complete privacy to the sleeping person. Such a bed is often in the center of the room. Of course, to realize such a luxury in a small room will not succeed.
If it is not possible to bring the main element of style into the room, you can use a variety of decorations that emphasize its style - put a screen, blocking the place for changing clothes, hang a huge fan with the image of flying cranes over the bed. It will be useful to hang photographs or a picture depicting a lotus on the wall - the flower represents perfection and harmony.
Painted canvases are often hung above the head of the ceiling, but in modern interiors they are often replaced with glass. However, you can take this place with murals depicting dragons or crooked pines growing on top of a rocky cliff. Tall multi-colored lamps made of bamboo and rice paper and tall floor vases will fit well into the interior.
Conclusion
To create a Chinese flavor in your home with your own hands is not the easiest event, but the subsequent effect will reward the worker a hundredfold. The Chinese style is life-affirming, wise and very positive. It is soft, pleasant and very harmonious.If there is no way to create it using expensive furniture, then it is quite possible to achieve the same effect using decor, decoration and accessories.