A few years ago when maximalism was the big interior trend, I papered all the walls of our master bedroom in a heavily-patterned, floral blue wallpaper. To accompany it, I painted everything else in the room a deep blue to match. While I loved this look for a while (and I still love the wallpaper design), I quickly yearned for a much more calming space to wind down, read, sleep and get dressed in. The room gets a lot of light with two windows in it, yet the deep shade of blue sucked that beautiful morning light away. The jazzy wallpaper pattern didn’t feel soothing or resting and didn’t provide the blank canvas required when choosing what to wear for the day (all the colour and pattern of my clothes intermixed with the wallpaper and the blue, making everything clash).