Adding Fearless Downtown Vibes to Your Uptown Design

Even just from the song ‘Uptown Girl’ by Billy Joel, it’s clear there are distinctions between uptown and downtown. Even  though the terms often have different meanings today, ‘uptown’ used to signify a middle to wealthy class neighborhood while ‘downtown’ was deemed a poorer side of town when compared to its uptown counterpart. If this is still difficult to put into perspective, think of the Great Gatsby where East Egg represented where the wealthier elite resided while West Egg was essentially the opposite of its eastern counterpart.

You may have the impression that when it comes to uptown versus downtown, they are complete opposites and therefore cannot be mixed together in one interior design, but know that this is just a misconception.

To really give your home all you can give it, you must be able to be brave in implementing unique interior design tips and tricks, such as mixing uptown and downtown in the same design. Today, our team at Cocoweb.com will be more than happy to show you how to do such.

Play around with prints and textures.

Let’s first talk texture and print for a minute. This is one of the biggest elements of a space that indicates whether a space is elegant or casual. Casual textures and prints tend to include plaid, knit, burlap, checkers, stripes, and polka dots. Elegant textures and prints may include granite, damask, satin, velvet, slate, and lace.

In an uptown and downtown home or apartment, seek to provide a healthy variation of both elegant and casual textures and prints in your interior space. Notice how in the above picture that there is plenty of this. The woven piece on the wall could be considered more casual while the dimples on the lamp base and the intricate prints on the pillow cases are a little bit fancier.

You can provide the prints and textures you wish; there are literally thousands to pick and choose from. Some may even consider metallics texture as well as they can provide either a sleek and shine to them as with some metals while matte metals may create a dull and rough appearance.

Considering mixing metal light fixtures with fluffy rugs and pillows; a leather couch with a brick accent wall; or even a velvet throw blanket with a casual, cotton chair. Do the same with prints. From these examples, one can better see how mixing different textures and prints can provide balance between uptown and downtown in a design.

Create a steady balance of extravagance and comfort.

Downtown spaces may be described as more casual, rougher, yet still comfortable to live in whereas uptown designs may feature be delicate and uptight. But to make a home livable to your liking, it is important that you implement both comfortable and extravagant furniture and pieces throughout your design.

From the featured image for this section, you’ll notice that the latter has been achieved. There is a more extravagant set of lamps, a vase of flowers, and classy curtains. In the very same design, there also features a comfy, worn down couch. You don’t have to do this in the exact same way, but this does help make it clearer how comfort and extravagance can merge into one.

The end point is, if you want an uptown-downtown design, you’re going to want to not only make you space particularly attractive but also casual enough to wind down and enjoy oneself. Everyone may have a different idea of how this should be met. You may even wish to choose items that are neither too ‘uptown’ nor too ‘downtown’ to achieve equilibrium in your space.

Allow uptown and downtown to fuse, even if they are right next to each other. Create no boundaries.

One of the biggest mistakes that can be made in interior design is separating things that look different or offer a different mood than another piece within the space. For example, someone may have both antique and contemporary furniture in the sample space but place the antique furniture in corner of the space as if it is meant to be a separate part of the design from the contemporary furniture. Don’t do this!

Instead, be comfortable with blending different styles as one. If you feel like you have to separate styles in your space, chances are, they don’t belong together at all. Keep in mind that separating styles in a space, instead of making the space balanced, it actually offers the opposite effect. Anyone who walks into your space will know instantly that you’re trying to conceal something, and it’s not working.

Take a look at the featured image above. We featured this image to both show you want to do and what not to do in your uptown-downtown interior design. First notice how the entire design offers a more downtown vibe whereas the entire bed offers more of an uptown feel. The problem with this is that there’s a wealthier component (the more modern, luxurious bed) smack dab within an urbanized apartment/home. This makes both uptown and downtown appear separate in the design. Instead, it would have been wiser to choose a bedframe that was more downtown-ish, feature more casual pillows on the bed, or implement a more modern flooring to allow the two designs to merge more naturally.

But on a positive note, the design does get it right in the right most corner of the design where there are both casual and fancier elements close in range to not create a division between the two styles and instead creating harmony. Aim for something like this.

Don’t be afraid to still let your personal interests shine through in your design.