Interior Design to Make You Feel at Home

Flicking through the pages of a design magazine, it’s easy to fall in love with an interior captured on glossy paper. It’s harder to imagine translating that look to your own life, where children, pets, budget or location constrain the possibilities. To design an interior that truly reflects your personality and your lifestyle – in the most beautiful way possible – takes a very talented interior designer.

Angelique Armstrong, owner of Christchurch-based interior design firm Armstrong Interiors, is an award-winning designer with a reputation that has propelled her business to the highest levels of success, helping clientele around New Zealand. ‘Do you feel good with your interiors?’ she asks. ‘Do they make you feel happy to be home?’

These questions are the starting point for discovering what delights you: ‘Do you love your dining table and chairs? Do they make you want to use them and entertain? They should make dinners a time to enjoy and slow life down.’ At its most simple, it’s about interior spaces that make you feel good. If there are aspects that arouse negativity, then perhaps it’s time to review the design – improving the mood of your home is important and an expert interior designer can pinpoint exactly what needs to change. Says Angelique, ensuring that your living spaces are the right fit begins with the designer taking the time to get to know you, ‘being able to listen and to read you’, but also introducing you to elements you ‘may never have considered’.

The Armstrong Interiors showroom provides a perfect setting for exploring the options. Originating in Angelique’s master bedroom back in 2013, graduating to the lounge and then a studio beside the garage, the business relocated to a showroom on Papanui Road in January 2019. Making it easy for clients to pop in and visit, the showroom allows people to ‘immerse themselves in the wonderful world of interiors’.

That means exploring fabrics from all over the world and an ever-changing tableau of furniture and homeware. A meeting room includes a large screen for viewing imagery of previous projects and what could be achieved in the client’s own home. ‘We can show them the way we work and the journey to expect from start to finish.’ In 2020 Armstrong Interiors will be opening a second showroom, in Auckland, to give Auckland-based customers the same experience.

With in-house CAD Design capabilities, Armstrong Interiors goes a step beyond other interior design companies. Not only do they design schemes and soft furnishings, they are able to provide full working drawings for all trades. Accustomed to working closely with architects and builders, their input helps to ensure designs are accurately translated to the real world – saving time and reducing stress for clients. In addition, Angelique has established close relationships with a hand-selected range of suppliers and fabricators for the essential ‘building blocks’ of design – fabrics, wallpaper, stone, tiles and timber – and for the final touches of furniture, lighting, artwork and accessories. Working with proven experts ensures a quality job with no errors and minimal wastage, and it is this attention to detail from start to finish of the process that sets Armstrong Interiors apart.

 

 

In fact, an eye for the details is key in the design style that Angelique is renowned for. As she describes it: ‘I like a design that is not so predictable, encouraging my brain to wonder how and why a particular look is so fabulous. Layering is interesting, seeing negative detail coming through in design, but also shadow and dead space.’ It is all about honouring the small details to create a visual symphony that is endlessly intriguing – that, and an effortless flow from room to room, utilising a colour palette, style of furniture, or an element that pulls the look together throughout the home.

And, if the ‘look’ that you like in the magazines really doesn’t match the way that you live, don’t lose heart. According to Angelique, this is actually quite common. ‘Life gets in the way, children, not enough money, not enough room in our homes.’ The solution is to break down the look that you love into its individual elements. Says Angelique, ‘We are very good at juggling’, with ideas to help bridge the gap between the look you love and the life you lead!

For more information, visit armstronginteriors.co.nz.

Photography Eddison Te Reo and Mick Stephenson