Design Your Dream Home

When we say „home”, everyone thinks of something different – however, there are some tips and tricks that anyone can use to make their homes more cozy and stylish. If you want to seize the many opportunities hiding in your surroundings, it’s usually enough to let your creativity take the reins. We interview to Zita Konnerth, the art director of our exhibition, about how you can create your very own living area and how S/ALON BUDAPEST can help you gather inspiration for this task.

If you step through the door of an everyday Hungarian home, what kind of missed opportunities do you see?​

The most regularly overlooked aspect is the lighting. If we look around a room, the homeowners most probably have one ceiling light with a single bulb. No matter how good quality the lamp is, it is simply unable to give a light that provides good visibility throughout the entire day. It’s more practical and aesthetic if we pair one central pendant light with several additional lamps. We can achieve a cozy, mysterious mood lighting by laying out Christmas lights on the floor, or by placing lanterns on the windowsills on cold winter nights.
At this exhibition several professional brands will be serving us with lighting inspiration – such as Manooi, Foscarini (delegated by Sil Design), Modulamp, Adamlamp, Solinfo, or Blum & Wolf.

It is also a common phenomenon that we leave huge sections of walls empty, without any wallpapers, tapestries, or pictures – even though a well-dressed wall can shift the focus within the room. We don’t have to stick to rigid rules either: we can use a paint roller instead of wallpapers, or we can try to create our very own graphic designs, setting our art pieces within store-bought frames, putting them on canvas, or composing them onto a sizable cardboard.
The other problem I often encounter is that we don’t think of our house plants as elements of interior design, and we scatter them without any consciousness. I’m not talking about meticulous planning, it’s completely enough to flip through a magazine on the subject or to browse inspiring pictures in virtual reality. It also helps a lot if we place the plants in uniform ceramic pots or if we keep them elevated in plant holders or on tiny tables, which could create an effortless symmetry in the room.
Is it really that simple? It doesn’t sound very complicated, or expensive.​ 

With a little effort, inspiration, and creativity most apartments can easily be turned into a cozy and charming home. We need to dive into our collection of furniture and decor items, since every household has at least one spare lamp, nightstand, ceramic pot, or cushion tucked away somewhere. Unlike people from Scandinavian countries, like the Danish and Swedish who drink the spirit of design basically with their breast milk, Hungarians don’t have interior design in their little fingers but it is something that has to be studied and learned.As an art director, do you intend S/ALON BUDAPEST to be an educational event?​ 

Shaping the public taste is an important mission of ours. We would like people to recognize the possibilities hiding in their homes, and to organize their living spaces more consciously and confidently for the sake of their own happiness. This unique exhibition will be a great opportunity to see ornate, exquisitely styled, and sometimes jarring interiors up close. We can be finally present in these spaces and we can personally try out which one feels like home.

And how will we accomplish this? Come to our exhibition between September 21st and 23rd in Budapest Sportaréna and see for yourself! All design enthusiasts are more than welcome to join.