Gender-neutral decor: Blurring the line between masculine & feminine design
Gender-neutral decor is an ideal option if you want your home to appeal to everyone. It suits young families, men and women, retired couples, and even young adults. It’s the compromise between dramatic, masculine design and romantic, feminine design. If you’re struggling to appease everyone’s tastes, maybe gender-neutral decor is the right choice for your home.
“Design is a matter of balancing different needs and outlooks-practical and aesthetic, masculine and feminine, designer and client, dream and reality,”
What is masculine interior design?
Clean lines, geometric patterns, sharp edges, lots of different textures, and dark, dramatic colour palettes are all elements of masculine interior design. It’s a sleek, modern aesthetic that avoids soft, pale colours. Finishes are often in brass or gold, too.
What is feminine interior design?
Feminine interior design features floral and botanical prints, curvy furniture shapes, vases of fresh flowers, intricately designed accessories, and soft, pale colours. Decorative pillows and cushions, ruffles, and velvet, silk, and damask fabrics are all common elements of feminine interior design.
4 ways to blur the lines of masculine & feminine design with gender-neutral decor
Gender-neutral decor doesn’t have to be bland. It doesn’t need to strip a room of personality and colour - it’s a personality and aesthetic all on its own. Here are 4 gender neutral decor ideas to inspire you as you design your home’s interior.
Use neutral colours for a gender-neutral base
Earthy colours and white are gender-neutral. With these tones, you can avoid an explicitly masculine or feminine interior.
Choose neutral colours as the base of your room (for example, in the walls, curtains, or furniture) and use colour as an accent. This way, you have a gender-neutral backdrop to everything in the room, the colour elements won’t be the focus, but the colour will still provide personality and interest.
Just make sure that your accent colour isn’t an obvious masculine or feminine colour. A bright pink cushion, for example, will immediately make the room feel feminine. Instead, choose greens, yellows, and even blues as your accents.
Use shades of colour in gender-neutral decor
In interior design, pastel colours are regarded as feminine colours, while saturated reds, oranges, and blacks are masculine. The solution for creating a gender-neutral home is to compromise.
Instead of pink, choose peach. Instead of pastel blue, choose teal. Instead of black, choose graphite. Take a masculine or feminine colour and make it gender-neutral by opting for a different shade - or tone - of that colour.
Incorporate green in gender-neutral decor
Green is one of the best gender-neutral colours to use. It falls between traditionally masculine and feminine colours and there are so many different shades available. It works for any space, and yet it’s still an interesting, compelling colour to liven up a room.
The palettes below offer a variety of green shades, including olive, mint, teal, and even greens with more blueish undertones (such as aqua and turquoise). All of these create a gender-neutral space.
Incorporate gender-neutral patterns and prints in your gender-neutral decor
Geometrics are a masculine pattern, while floral and botanical prints are feminine. Here are some gender-neutral pattern and print options:
Stripes.
Polka dots/circles/spheres.
Leaves, snowflakes, animals, plaids, depictions of scenery, or even stars.
A pattern or print that mixes masculine and feminine shapes: curves and hard lines (as seen in the marbled pattern below).
Shop for gender-neutral decor to blend masculine and feminine interior design in your home
Considering gender-neutral decor for your home? Browse Designers Guild wallpapers, or explore Home Fabrics’ library of colourful and diversely textured fabrics to inspire your home makeover. With the right elements of gender-neutral decor, your home can find the sweet spot between masculine and feminine interior design.
