Louise Heggie was helping design interiors before she was even old enough to work. Her mom had a flair for beautifying living spaces and encouraged a young Heggie to speak up about the family’s reno projects. “I’ve always been into interior design. Since I was a kid, I was sitting around the table with my mom and blueprints and architects and designers whenever we were reno-ing a house—and we reno’d many as I grew up,” she remembers. It’s only logical that she’s gone on to found her own interior design firm, Louise Heggie Design Therapy. “The writing was on the wall—literally—for me,” she quips. We asked Heggie to highlight three interior-design trends for 2018, and below, she shares three.
Things are getting darker—in a good way
“It’s been popular for so long to have things be light, bright and white and clean,” says Heggie. It complements open-concept spaces—hardly a new trend at this point—she notes. “But, what’s happening now is people are… starting to go towards these sort of moodier, darker hues in the home—not just homes, retail spaces as well,” she points out. Darker colour schemes present unique opportunities to use lighting to highlight certain statement features. You could spotlight a piece of art, for example. “You’re able to really play with lighting schemes in those environments,” she says. “You almost gain an artistry or a control over the space that you didn’t formerly have because it was the space that was determining what you would look at.” Don’t worry about light absorption, even if you’re in a south–west facing condo unit with wall-to-wall glass. “We can cover your windows with a UV film that will essentially negate that.”
There’s a move towards earthy, natural finishes
People are clustering in urban centres, but as they migrate to the concrete jungle for new opportunities, they lose something. “I do believe we’re separated from nature in our society, and because of our disconnection with it we need to bring it in, we have to bring it into our dwellings,” Heggie insists. “You can do this in a stylish way.” Recently in a bathroom she put tiles that are engineered to look and feel like wood. She paired the floor with wallpaper made to look like a tree’s growth rings. “With home spaces, what I work with primarily—and what I really try to do—is bring the outdoors indoors,” she says.
“Artistic” track lights
Like open-concept layouts, track lights have been around a while. But how people are using them has evolved. “They kind of never go away, they’re always in projects because first of all they’re cheap, they’re cheerful, and they do the job. But how can you make track lights look sexy? How can you make them look cool?” Heggie has an answer to her own question. She suggests something as simple as laying out the tracks creatively. “When you layer the track lights in an X [shape], it’s phenomenal,” she says. Home stagers and realtors may want to take note. Heggie suggests it’s an easy and economical way to make a listed home look “design-forward”—and fast.