How to Create Chic Cushion Combinations

Not all of us are born interior designers – in fact, very few of us are. Some individuals have a natural understanding of colour and textures (you’ll find them in retail buying jobs or design companies) while most of us really don’t have much a clue – regardless of how much we love and appreciate design style.

Luxury London interiors company Oka understand this and which is why they’ve come up with a super new interactive cushion arranger for their website. What this does is allows the customer an opportunity to place cushions of differing textures and colours alongside each other on a virtual couch to see if they’re a match. Or – if not a match – if they clash beautifully. This prevents many a return purchase which, let’s face it, is a big win/win for both company and customer these days.

While marvelling at yet another IT advancement in the field of interiors, it also prompted us to look at particular cushion combinations for set rooms in the home to see what works and what combinations need the stuffing knocked out of them. See if you agree with our choices:

Minimizing to a mere three colours

Cushions are a great way to introduce a pop of colour or a new pattern into a room. If you want more than one colour and size of cushion on your sofa or bed then it’s a good idea to use no more than three different versions. More than that and rather than appearing inviting the space will end up looking messy and you’ll feel stressy.

If you’ve a bunch of cushions for an area and you really want a particular colour or pattern to stand out, then use it more often and in the smallest size. Keep the largest cushion in a neutral shade, the medium-sized should be mid-tone and finally the small cushions should be the colour/pattern that you want to preside over the display. In fact designers refer to this as the 60/30/10 rule.

Sticking to the same size cushions

If you prefer your cushions the same size yet want to incorporate three colours in the design then it’s an idea to ensure the shades all come from the same end of the colour spectrum ie that they’re either ‘warm’ or ‘cold.’ Having a warm shade contrast with a cold one ie ‘warm’ orange and a ‘cold’ blue leads to a contrast and prove clashing rather than complementary. It won’t appear balanced either since the bright warmer colour will always dominate.

Consider co-ordinating different shaped cushions

Provided the design or colour is the same (or similar) you can combine a whole range of different sized and shaped cushions such as circular, square, rectangular etc together.

 

As you can see from the above, selecting cushion combinations isn’t as easy as you might previously have believed – well, not if you want your home to have some style anyway. And who doesn’t? Better get using that virtual cushion selector – either that or preparing for a walk back down the high street to the post office.