Home Decorating: Some colour and a brand new look

Charlotte Meyer is the founder of the interior design company PLUME Interiors in Munich. After several years of living in Stockholm (where she was born), New York and Zurich, she now lives and works in Munich where she decorates mostly private homes with old keepsakes and new objects, adding wallpaint, colour, textiles and structure to give her projects a brand new signature.

IRMA loves the nonchalance of her Munich apartment and asked her how she does it.

IRMA: Do you change the colour of your accessories by the season?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Yes, I do! I get triggered by seasonal flowers, picking a matching vase, changing the colours of the candles and then suddenly I realize I’m in the middle of a new color scheme and then it just evolves from there.
I have a big candle holder from En Soie, Zurich, which I always decorate according to the seasons: on Easter I hang their porcelain Easter eggs from the arms and early in December I embellish it with their beautiful Christmas decorations. I started collecting them in 1998.

IRMA: Is there a tip when it comes to a combination of different colors in print and also in living accessories?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: My credo is “If you love it, it will work”, but a basic advice is that one colour of each print should follow through the whole mix ‘n match scheme. Also, be careful when matching prints with a light base, such as cream and white… The base colour must match! A friend with exceptional taste in interiors once told me that a color (even just a pop of colour) should appear three times in a room… I often realize that this rule of thumb is true in a harmonious interior.

IRMA: Your favorite colours for small, somewhat dark rooms?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Dark, dark, dark! A dark room will not become lighter with light-coloured walls. My favorite colour at the moment is Baleine from Flamant.

IRMA: Where do you find inspiration when it comes to choosing a new fabric for a stool of couch?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Once I’ve established how the piece will be used (often, seldom or never) and in what combination it will be placed, I then dive into my boxes with fabric samples, which are arranged by colour. I constantly source new fabrics and find a lot of new designs on Instagram.

IRMA: An accessory you could not live without?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Spontaneously I have to say my teapot from Guy Degrenne.
When it comes to an interior object it’s my black Lalique vase that my husband gave to me the first Christmas we spent in Munich. It’s equally beautiful with or without flowers and due to the black, the colour of the flowers really pops out.

IRMA: Who is your favorite interior designer at the moment and why?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: It’s nearly impossible to narrow down the choice to one, as I feel that I have several favorites for different interiors. My top three are Ilse Crawford, Rita Konig and Muriel Brandolini. Their different interiors instantly speak to me and I want to live in their designed rooms.

IRMA: Your favorite travel destination when it comes to looking for new interior ideas?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Definitely Stockholm, but London and Paris add their fair share of inspiration.

IRMA: Best home shopping adress in Stockholm?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Svenskt Tenn and the auction houses Bukowskis and Auktionsverket.

IRMA: Your favorite artist, when thinking about colour?
CHARLOTTE MEYER: Mark Rothko, without doubt.