Blog Post: Transitional Design Style in Custom Homes

Link: https://premierdesigncustomhomes.com/transitional-design-style/

Blog on the transitional style of an interior design composed for Premier Design Custom Homes through the Curio Electro marketing firm. This is where I get to work with my favorite topics: design, craftsmanship, and aesthetics.  

Are you looking for a way to bring a sense of personality and depth to your space?​

Do you want something that’s both timeless and cutting edge? Your answer might be in the transitional architectural style. Put simply, the transitional style of home design is often described as “classical with a modern twist”, but the reality is more specific than that.

What is transitional design style?

This eclectic style draws from a broad range of influences and design principles, but it boils down to this: combining elements of two different time periods to create one cohesive look. Transitional Décor is one of the most popular trends in interior design – the National Kitchen and Bath Association ranked it as a top design trend over the last four years.

One serves as the foundation (walls, flooring, tile, and surfaces) and another as personality (furniture and fixtures). A common usage is to blend adjacent times periods – like Victorian fixtures with midcentury patterns – to create a sense of history. Another option is to use diverse, distant time periods to create a striking, unique look.

More adventurous homeowners have combined modern architecture with older interior design elements to create contrast.​ The real benefit of the transitional style is its flexibility. It allows you to make bold choices and draw from a wide range of influences and blend them together seamlessly. These could include a bathroom with a claw foot tub and a glass shower enclosure, a kitchen with exposed piping and marble countertops, or a Victorian chandelier with modern woodwork.

With the transitional style, you have a huge array of options in designing your home. 

Transitional Architecture

To make these design choices work, the transitional style operates on subtlety. This helps the elements blend together so that the home doesn’t become too noisy. 

This style uses straight, crisp lines, sleek shapes, and grid patterns combined with a color soft palette of warm neutrals like vanilla, cream, and khaki. Glass is a huge part of this style. Many transitional homes use large, sweeping windows with influences from the 1920s to 1950s to craft a sense of personality and flood the home with natural light.

​Glass barriers and doors allow you to control the flow and visibility of your home. You can carry all these principles to your exterior, using straight lines and soft colors to blend classical and modern architectural styles.

Transitional Interior Design

After the fundamental style is established, interior design is where you can sell the distinct look and feel of your home. The transitional style uses textures like wood, glass, lacquer, rattan, and fabric to establish the underlying personality of the home. Furnishing is based on centerpieces: for each room, just find an element like a chandelier, sink, sofa, or counter that expresses your second time period and around it.

Metals are crucial to establishing your time periods. Brass and oil rubbed bronze finishes are associated with vintage time periods, while chrome and nickel are more modern. For the adventurous, you can do mixed metals: blending two different finishes in your kitchen or bathroom for a unique visual statement.  

These are just a few of your options as a homeowner when you design in the transitional style. You have a huge range of elements that can be blended seamlessly into a single look with a few careful choices. Have any questions about the transitional style, or other ways to bring your vision to life? Give us a call.