Contrast has replaced uniformity in the world of interior design

Creating a new look for your home is all about mixing styles and designs to suit your personality and the space you have. The biggest design crime you can commit, according to current thinking, is to follow any single style or trend too far. A survey of 900 interior designers and decorators in the United States, conducted earlier this year for the Best Decorating Ideas website, revealed that what consumers wanted most was the 'freedom to express themselves'. Douglas Young, the founder and chief executive of lifestyle store G.O.D, said people in Hong Kong were getting over their obsession with matching everything in their homes. 'The thinking is completely different today,' he said. 'Just like the way we dress, we have long given up matching colours and styles. Now it's all about contrasts. Jeans can go with lace tops, blazers can go with flip-flops. Similarly, in home decoration unlikely elements can be juxtaposed with startling results.' G.O.D (which stands for Goods Of Desire) has been marketing stylish furniture and funky home accessories to Hong Kong's design-hungry consumers since 1996. As the company entered its second decade, Mr Young said he saw two main themes in design concepts. 'Firstly, there is the new/old axis,' he said. 'This is when, say, a hi-tech polished steel dining table is matched with Louis XIV chair, or a Victorian leather Chesterfield sofa is scattered with 1960s Op Art cushions.' He predicted more mixing of eastern and western styles, something that G.O.D has excelled at. 'So a Ming cabinet can be used to display a collection of Lalique crystal, or an ornate Chinese lantern can be hung against a backdrop of damask wallpaper,' Mr Young suggested. For Mike Atkin of HEAD Architecture and Design, creating a beautiful home was less about following trends in design and more about understanding what clients wanted. 'When someone comes to me I don't look for a trend, I look at them,' Mr Atkin said. 'You listen to them and the idea grows. You don't just take something that's current and plug it into the apartment you're doing.' He said mixing and matching different elements, bought and acquired over time, was the most natural way to decorate a home. The challenge is to take pieces and elements you like and combine them to create a self-defining look. The right balance is not always easy to achieve. Mr Atkin said eclectic combinations 'needed to breathe' so as to avoid a 'jamboree bag' effect. One approach, he suggested, was to have a fairly neutral background and add individual pieces and splashes of colour to bring in your personality. Robert Keilitz, business development director at Tai Ping Carpets, said the creation of a home that reflected the individual's lifestyle extended to the choice of carpet. 'People are becoming very adventurous,' he said. At Tai Ping Carpets' showroom in Prince's Building, Central, bespoke carpets can be ordered in any size, pattern or colour. Mr Keilitz said customers took part in the design process by working with Tai Ping in Hong Kong and its studios in New York and Paris. The hand-tufted carpets are produced at the Tai Ping factory in China. 'A carpet is the fifth wall,' Mr Keilitz said. 'Your eyes focus on it when you walk into the room. That's why you'd better be sure it's something you like. 'Making the carpet work with your other home furnishings is a question of how creative you are. It's all about mixing.' Mr Keilitz said solid colour carpets were selling less of late. 'They're getting more into patterns, and they're getting into colour.' He also noted a comeback of the bold graphics and huge flower patterns of Finnish design company Marimeiko and the structured, symmetrical carpet designs of David Hicks, both popular in the 1960s and '70s. 'There isn't one set trend, it's very fragmented,' Mr Keilitz said. People were also experimenting with chinoiserie, baroque and other overtly ornamental patterns such as paisley, he added. G.O.D's Douglas Young said his company was stocking a selection of Chinese antiques alongside its signature contemporary pieces, and for contrast there were baroque-inspired plastic and wrought iron chandeliers. Mixing unusual items is an old practice at Shambala, which sources antiques, furniture and home furnishings from all over Asia-Pacific. Owner Andy Robbins, who opened his first Shambala store in 1996, said consumers were realising that the world's natural resources were finite and they had begun to show a keen interest in the quality of the materials. At Shambala, solid and original materials were an intrinsic part of design. 'Over time, the patina of age brings a warmth and increased value to these pieces,' Mr Robbins said. Some Shambala furniture has been restored to its original functions, such as 19th-century cabinets from the mainland or a 1920s table and chairs set from colonial Burma. There are also pieces made from wood salvaged from old, demolished buildings in India and China. Shambala's 2,250 square metre showroom in Ap Lei Chau contains an assortment of such ingeniously fashioned pieces, including bookcases made from doorframes found in the Himalayas and coffee tables topped with old Chinese paving stones. Mr Robbins said today's customers were less into cramming their apartments with antiques and more into mixing antique and modern pieces and making them work together. 'I'm impressed when someone gets this right. The warmth and depth of a genuine antique brings life and soul to any room. Just one piece can contrast wonderfully with a contemporary style. It brings in a dimension of time, and a context to modern style. 'Why confine yourself to a single-dimension trend when you can have it all?' he asked.