Spanish Interior Design

Ashley Zond
4 min readSep 22, 2022

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Floor-to-ceiling windows, wooden furniture and an abundance of ceramics… Does it remind you of anything? These features refer to the Spanish-style interior you can easily recreate at home.

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The Spanish interior is:

  • a riot of colours;
  • an abundance of details;
  • mixture of different styles, shapes, and materials.
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Its basis is the traditional Mediterranean style, but it is impossible to confuse it, for example, with Greek. The Spanish interior has its own special mood and its own atmosphere. Today I’ll tell you all about its features and give some pieces of advice on how to bring its elements into your home.

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Layout

The Spanish interior has very unusual layouts.

First, Spaniards have an interesting urban development, where you can find a big amount of old buildings. Historical houses in the city usually have very high vaulted or beamed ceilings and large windows.

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Second, rooms themselves are often quite small. Windows can be floor-to-ceiling or with access to the terrace or roof. Why? A large amount of light expands the room space! Spaniards also like to use glass in interior design, for instance, inserts in walls, partitions and doors with glass.

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Textures

The Spanish interior is full of textures: rough plaster, painting, stone in interior decoration, ceramic tiles, natural textiles, wood or metal. For every taste!

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White & Red

The dominant tone of the walls in the interior is very calm. It is usually white or sandy. You can finish with a traditional textured plaster or smooth painting. Many details, bright and contrasting coloured parts of walls, doors, furniture, or textiles, introduce colour diversity.

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Сeramics

Ceramics are the main distinguishing features of the Spanish interior. Creativity with tiles can be limitless: from ornamental tiles to colourful mosaics, stone slabs and terrazzo. Besides, tiles can serve as a material for walls and floors in almost any area! Accent ornamental tiles are a wonderful idea to diversify your interior!

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Furniture

In the traditional view of Spanish design, choose furniture of dark wood and rather massive shapes. The modern version, however, tends more to lightness. Furniture made of light wood is more elegant. There are even metal pieces of furniture with frames, wicker or with ethnic accents.

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Often furniture becomes part of the space. Imagine a table located around a column, or built-in storage systems. Want to use antique furniture in your modern Spanish interior? Try to find it at a flea market, restored or presented in its authentic form.

Decor

Since living in the tropical climate, the Spaniards have great options for framing windows to protect from sunlight. For example, in old houses, you can find stunning wooden shutters; in new buildings, in its turn, people most often use Roman blinds. Classic curtains decorate the windows less often.

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Decor includes a lot of greenery. Have you ever seen plants in beautiful ceramic pots on balconies or terraces? So lovely! Spanish homes have a great variety of dishes and various vases. Among textile items, pillows and blankets are more popular, whilst tablecloths and curtains are less common.

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The Spanish interior incredibly combines old and new cultural traditions and novelties, a riot of colour and simplicity. All these elements harmoniously exist in one space. If you have difficulties with thinking through the design and arrangement of furniture, I recommend using the Planner5D application. It is convenient to use and gives room for imagination. Good luck!

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Ashley Zond

I’m an amateur writer finding my way to interior design column!