Influence in Interior Design

One of my many eclectic hobbies is searching for the latest trends and styles in architecture and interior design. The main blog that I follow is called Freshome.com, and out of curiosity I looked up whether or not there were any articles that were related to fairytales. The two main categories of articles that popped up were:

1. little girl bedroom decorations such as castle beds and princess-esque rooms, and

2.sculpted furniture that related to fairytales through their wood/nature/elf-inspired designs

Take a look...

"“these beautiful play beds reminding of childhood fairytales…are meant to stir up the imagination of young ladies and cause them a delightful transition into dream land….The mini-castles feature classic story elements but also practical parts, such as shelving systems and other types of storage spaces. For little girls, having their own private castle is probably their biggest wish. However, the prices for these designs are really steamy, some of the beds costing of $20,000, which makes us reevaluate the latter sentence and advise parents to come up with alternative ways of stimulating creativity and imagination.”

"When I look at these chairs they seem to be from a fairytale, a king elf throne, or something"

If you're interested in more of this kind of stuff, check out the page at:

http://freshome.com/?s=fairy+tale

These articles give us yet another example of the influence of fairytales in our culture today. Fairytales have gone as far as to inspire the styles of furniture that may be in our own homes! First, we have castle beds meant for stimulating the creativity little girls. It is interesting to note that the designs of these beds emphasize the previously mentioned "girlyness" of fairytales; the castles are pink and cream-colored, the ambiance is light and bright, the sheets on the bed are made of satin, the bed is surrounded by innocent forest creatures, and each feature a tall winding staircase. Aside from the outrageous prices, these beds are over-extravagant and reek of "spoiled child". But hey, for $20,000 they come with storage spaces.

The second category of articles were composed of mostly wood-based furniture designs. Their descriptions included inspiration from elves, fairies, and dwarves. It actually please me to see these articles, because they focus on an aspect of fairytales that are generally overlooked in popular culture. We commonly think of princesses and romance when discussing fairytales, but most tales are centered around magical and otherworldly characters such as talking animals. These characters often guide and aid the protagonists of fairytales and are essential, if not more important parts of these stories.

On a more positive note, the fact that interior design has taken a page from the creativity of fairytales highlights the aspect of "escapism and fantasy" in the fairytales that we read. Some fairytales evoke a sense of nationalism in the reader, and others may be written as ethnographic studies of certain cultures. But, the fairytales from our childhood primarily allowed us to escape into wonderful new worlds, and we shouldn't forget that.