Products from decoration hell - Part 6
15/9/2022
Translation: machine translated
What is beautiful and what is not is in the eye of the beholder. However, the following items from our range leave the question of taste far behind. Welcome to my personal interior nightmare - part 6.
These "designer pieces" may be useful. However, their appearance degrades any tasteful home - at least in my opinion.
Photo calendars
Free gifts when shopping usually come with a catch. In drugstores, for example, I always get a perfume sample of the very fragrance I don't like. At the pharmacy, it's a photo calendar that looks like someone has really let off steam with Photoshop. Worst of all, the latter is also available to buy. Nature, city or animals - the choice of motifs for the calendars in question is frighteningly large.
In most cases, the composition and image editing skills of the creators leave a lot to be desired. In the Switzerland calendar, everything is overexposed and in the cat calendar everything except the cat is unnaturally blurred. In the garden calendar, on the other hand, it is noticeable that the necessary skills must have been lacking when taking the photos: should I look at the lilies on the left, which are lost in the hydrangeas, or rather at the bare green patch on the right? If the focus on the cover is already unclear, then the serif font on the following pages doesn't help to make the whole thing prettier. Or have you ever seen a hovel that has been turned into a castle simply by the use of ornamentation? Exactly ...
Lattice furniture
I also stay away from home accessories or furniture with latticework to preserve the cosiness in my home. After all, ceramic birds locked in cages are anything but inviting to me. The same goes for lamps. Why should I shade their light with an enclosure? It's neither beautiful nor particularly practical.
Wicker shelves are even more uncomfortable. They may be functional, but they exude the charm of a supermarket. I find it difficult to store anything neatly in them. Instead, a full basket would constantly trigger me to put the things in it away in a cupboard - and the basket with it.
Plastic placemats
Let's stay with the image of a supermarket for a moment. When I come home from the shops, the first thing I do is unpack the food, remove the packaging and transfer it to ceramic containers and jars. Because all that colourful plastic packaging rarely looks good on the open shelf. So as I'm banning plastic from the kitchen, I'll be careful not to let plastic placemats into my dining room. Especially if they come in a toxic (!) green colour.
In addition, placemats made of silicone and the like magically attract crumbs and dust and increase the effort required to wipe the table. The only thing they don't do is whet the appetite: the sets are often printed with motifs such as stones or cars. A no-go in terms of style. Especially when I have a wooden table, which is jewellery in itself thanks to its grain.
Do you see it differently? I'd love to discuss it with you in the comments column. Want to see more of what my colleague Natalie Hemengül and I find tasteless? Here you can find more articles that have already appeared in this series:
opening image: House Doctor
Pia Seidel
Senior Editor
Pia.Seidel@digitecgalaxus.chLike a cheerleader, I love celebrating good design and bringing you closer to everything furniture- and interior design- related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior ideas, report on trends and interview creative minds about their work.