📷 Italtile 🖊Based on the Italtile blog
‘Dopamine décor’ has been heralded as the most exciting trend of 2022. It’s a mindfulness practice that started getting traction post-pandemic. With colours, patterns, styles and fabrics in combinations designed to boost the appearance of our skin, bring the glow, and consequently put a pep in the step and a smile on the dial. Versace says it’s hot pink. Stella McCartney believes it’s the vivid blues that do it. Over at Valentino it’s all about the acid greens.
Dopamine is an important chemical messenger in your brain that has many functions. When dopamine is released in large amounts, it creates feelings of pleasure and reward, which motivate you to repeat a specific behaviour. Low levels of dopamine are linked to reduced motivation and decreased enthusiasm for things that would excite most people (www.healthline.com).
But, what’s it got to do with décor? Experts say that dressing a home to de-stress is a happening thing. The right combo of neutrals in layers will bring waves of calm, and dynamic dabs of matt black, bright peacock pops here and there, natural lighting and delicious cushions scattered like jewels across your furniture will channel positive feelings. Put together with confidence – and some sound décor advice – you will feel an emotional connection to it all and your home will exude all the joy, happiness, welcome and positive energy you need to refuel every day.
Our contributor, the Italtile Blog, recommends interior design that looks good and makes us feel great.
For example, the lush new marble-look wallscapes in your bathroom, especially when paired with a V&A bath. Other features may include toasty hot towels provided by a heated towel rail, such as the Jeeves. A crystal-clear mirror, such as the supplier’s Affirmations, and padding barefoot on the soft warmth of richly grained wood-look tiles into a kitchen with gloriously patterned floors, or a bright and cheerful splashback, surrounded by beautiful accessories such as high design taps and sinks – Tivoli taps and Franke Tectonite sinks recommended by the supplier.
Dip a toe in the dopamine
Relax. You don’t have to rip up your whole home and start again. Inject a little joy with utterly magnificent taps. If you’re mad about glamour, or classic Victorian, or romantic and rustic farmhouse style, consider ranges such as Verano taps, from the Prato range. Dopamine factor? Well, let’s just say Gold, for starters. The Verano tap range offers high fashion looks with beautifully rounded forms and an unashamedly exquisite matt gold finish. Manufactured in Italy, these also offer a water-saving feature, slowing the flow to 6 litres a minute.
A contemporary classic, exclusive to Italtile, is the Sofi. Divine style that will bring high levels of happiness – and dare one say smugness – every day.
Dress your bathroom to impress with a one-of-a-kind tap named Dress, by Nobili. Choose the high-end finish of your choice – in a range of gorgeous neutrals – to blend in with your bathroom palette. Dress is also a waterwise choice.
Now let’s look at the power of bathroom accessories to complete your sanctuary of calm. There’s something immensely satisfying about a full set of well-organised accessories, matching, harmonising, neat as a pin. Add luxury to the mix, and you’ve got a very happy situation unfolding behind closed doors. Can a loo-roll holder bring joy? Suppliers say “100% yes”!
Zack, Italtile’s exclusive German precision, is all about edgy stainless steel modernity, as featured in the world’s best-dressed bathrooms. With these, elevate your minimalist bathroom vibe and up your feel-good factor. Always check for the 5-year guarantee. Look for installable options that don’t need messy drilling!
Dominus Accessories is a Proudly South African bathroom accessory manufacturer. Each beautifully crafted piece comes with a lifetime guarantee, so you can be sure you’re investing in lasting style. Ask for Omega, Finesse, Heritage, AstonandAlpha.
Now for the tiles: Get zingy with it
Go blazing full colour, or elegantly achromatic with black and white classics, or rustic neutral with the local Retro and its honeys, browns and winter whites, or venture into the anti-anxiety blues with highly desirable and Instagrammable new patchworks: Howard Blue and Leeds Blue. Both are from Spanish tile masters Prissmacer Ceramica, renowned for their inimitable style, eco-chic credentials and craftsmanship.
Give your walls Spanish flair
Continuing with Spanish-inspired happy-making, consider a new range now available.
This Spanish flair option of neutrals is soft and gentle, with textured patterns leading the way.
Heavenly pales create a feeling of spaciousness and impart an undeniably lush glow. As white-bodied tiles, these give colour enhancement to each surface. And because each range is available in a number of different surface patterns, you’ll be assured of a wallspace with variation and no repetition. Each range in the new collection proves that you don’t need bright colour to create feel-goodness.
Marble floor tiles
There is one surfacethat resonates with all of us. In 2022, Modern Marbles are trending in the tile world for their monumental and majestic size as well as their incredible diversity of pattern, graphic mastery and colour.
Marble tiles can truly reward your investment with a dopamine rush, every time you glance at it, tippy toe across it, or run your fingers across its glossy surface.
Consider products such as the new Mystic, which is more than just marble. Outsize and outstanding in every way, withincredible, almost fantasy-style marbling.
Hint: View the supplier’s Mystic, and our other highlights on their landing page at www.italtile.co.za/floors/featured-collections.
Energise, energise, energise: Use finger tiles, aka KitKats
These, say the experts, are so-called because they look like the little fingers of wafery, chocolatey deliciousness we’ve all loved since we were tiny. Say hello to the Japanese-inspired trend that’s literally breaking the hearts of Pinteresters everywhere. Each little finger is imperfectly perfect and glazed with a gradient towards the edge, which creates eye appeal and depth to your installation. Go cool, calm and collected with neutral softness, or full-on peacock pop with sapphire blue or green.
Biophilic Design brings happiness, again
This macro-trend is one of the ways in which we’re all going to find our happy places in an increasingly uncertain world and has its origins in the now-named Coronacoaster. Besides all the bad stuff, this immediate period of time was perfect for the rise of a design aesthetic with its roots in the 1980s, thanks to Harvard biologist and professor, E.O Wilson, who wrote a standout book called “Biophilia”.
Wilson outlined the fundamental tendency of human beings to be attracted to nature and emulate its processes and structures in everyday life. The great Frank Lloyd Wright was totally onboard, even earlier. He said: “I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day’s work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.” That’s the ethos of Biophilic Design – not only aesthetically pleasing but also mentally beneficial. It’s the feel-good factor, on superfoods!
More and more designers are interpreting this macrotrend, integrating elements like wood, natural lighting, plants and water into interior projects, along with what is called indirect biophilia – botanical patterns and motifs, textures and tones. Consider the vast ranges of stone-look tiles, wood-look tiles, patterned tiles, marble-look tiles and many, many décor tiles with nature-inspired textures and tones, as well as botanical and floral motifs.
A good example is the exclusive sanware from Laufen, such as Palomba, inspired by the shapes carved into rocks by wave action.
Consult the experts
Of course, it’s such a personal thing, feel-goodness, and there are multiple ways to up happiness in your day. Don’t embark on the happy-making journey alone if you’re in any way concerned about the how-to. Italtile offers to help you along the way.
Write to To Build – let us know how it is going. Best short letter gets published with your best pic. Email Gareth on editor@tobuild.co.za
