Tips on Asian Interior Design

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Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

Some folks think that Asian interior design is as simple as throwing up a few Oriental language symbols on the walls and you are finished. However, there is a great deal of ingenuity that goes into Asian interior design that was derived from centuries of experimentation.

The Asian cultures are very good at taking what has been learned over the years and persistently adapting and modifying it to become part of contemporary design methods. It isn’t atypical to see Asian interior design in the United States but if all you are looking at is a Chinese restaurant then you really aren’t seeing true Asian interior design at work. Real Asian interior design is very different and something most Western cultures have not really experienced but unknowingly deal with every day.

In Asian interior design, the concept of perspective is very important. If you have ever walked around a true Asian building you will notice that the idea of setting off a space by either lowering that space or raising the other space around it is being employed. In Asian interior design this is to give the notion of perspective and to help a room seem much bigger than it really is.

Many Western cultures use mirrors to achieve the same effect while the Asian cultures prefer to use a room forced perspective. With the advances in technology today that make enhancing a room size a little easier it is difficult to substantiate this sort of design technique but it can be effective if done properly.

Asian culture is renowned for its dragons but this is another piece of Americanization at work. For Asian interior design it isn’t necessarily the picture of a dragon that symbolizes what they are trying to say but rather the idea of a mural telling a tale. Dragons just happen to be a desirable part of Asian culture that Western cultures picked up on but if you get into real Asian interior design you will see small scrolls made of bamboo with entire stories on them. This story telling with wall hangings has been going on for centuries and has survived into modern times.

Many of the aspects of Asian interior design are about allowing light to flow freely without the need for electric light or any other type of artificial light. The way an Asian home is usually set up is a throw back to the days before electric light when the outside light needed to illuminate the entire house. It is not seen as much today but that notion of allowing outside light to flow freely is a very Asian concept.