COVID-19 has led to a large proportion of the UK workforce now working from home. If you did not regularly work from home before the outbreak, you might be finding it hard to concentrate sitting at the kitchen table being distracted by the fridge, or sat squashed up on the sofa in front of the TV….
Read MoreLast week I focused on if you can use wallpaper in a bathroom. This week, I thought it would be good to take a look at the new wallpaper designs that have been released so far for 2020….
Read MoreThe start of a New Year can always stir up a desire to change up your home and give it a slight refresh. While new furniture is expensive, you may not have the time nor the inclination to repaint your walls. So, just how do you give the rooms in your home a whole new, on-trend look and mix it all up a bit? Quite simply, the quickest and most effective way to switch up your home decor is to add in new framed prints, posters and art, which will completely revamp any space.
Read MoreAs the January sales come to an end, over the next few weeks we will see the release of new products from the spring/summer collections for 2020. This week I’ve decided to focus on the best new table and desk lamps becoming available to purchase.
Read MoreA 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).
Read MoreThe decline in square footage for both rental and owned properties has been steadily consistent for a long time as we grow as a population and urban, city living draws new residents every year. As the spaces we inhabit generally become smaller, we need to be clever choosing the right furniture and decor so that our rooms, although modest, feel as large as they can possibly look. Below I’ve listed my five favourite tried and tested tips for keeping a room feeling spacious, all though carefully considering the interior decor..
Read MoreAs the summer months wind down and we move into the new season, new bits and pieces from the AW19 home collections have started to pop-up in-store and online and boy, there are some gorgeous things out there to purchase right now. All the items listed below are currently on my personal ‘lust list’. Some I know I’ll cave in and purchase, others I have no space/need for but would snap them up in a heartbeat if I did!
Read MoreThis week MADE.com announced it was launching a collection of 8 prints in collaboration with the Natural History Museum. It’s something very different, a little bit vintage (some of these drawings have sat in the Museum’s archive for decades) and felt quite special, so I wanted to share it with you on the blog today.
Read MoreI’ve recently decided to swap around some furniture in my home, which has led to some space becoming available for decorative shelving in an alcove. I have shelves made from marble off-cuts in my bathroom and I love them, so I decided to go down the DYO (Design Your Own) route again and have more marble shelving made (I just amble on down to my local stone yard, flick through their worktop off-cuts and choose a couple of pieces which they cut and polish up for me for a small fee). Marble shelves are definitely a show-stopper, so they need the brackets to not let them down in the style-stakes. I’ve been hunting high and low for the best shelf brackets for sale in the UK the past week for these shelves, so here are my top ten picks!
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[AD] This post is part of a current working relationship with Grand Illusions. A styling, images, thoughts and opinions are my own.
The Celeste design has a casual blue floral pattern on a white background, while the Florido bowls are a deep, inky blue base with a white floral pattern. Even though they look like they cannot go in the dishwasher, they are all dishwasher safe (as washing up is the last thing you want to be doing on a warm summers day!)
The woven shopping bag below is not a new product, in fact, I’ve owned this from Grand Illusions for a while, but I’ve been using it all summer. It’s completely lightweight, but the boned structure of it means that it better supports picnic items than a tote bag. I chose this Paris shopper in yellow because I’m all about colour, but you can also get it in beige and black.
New build vs period property - it is one of the many decisions you may need to make when you consider buying a home. Older buildings, with their funny layouts, wonky walls, cracks and problem areas often have character and charm due to original features like detailed plasterwork and iron fireplaces. New builds can often appear to have a lot less character in comparison and may at first feel like an empty white box. Yet, by using lots of pattern, colour and texture, it is possible to create an inviting, warm home full of personality, as well as having all the benefits a news build offers such as energy efficiency and a great location (often being near great transport links.)
Read MoreIf you take a quick scan of my Instagram account you’ll see that I do not shy away from using colour in my home. You’ll find doors painted in teal blues, upcycled cabinets painted pink and a bright orange chesterfield sofa. I wasn’t always this confident with colour in my decor choices. Like most people, I was afraid to paint a room a whole block colour and I shied away from making furniture purchases in bold hues in case I regretted it (always going with the safe, grey fabric option.) It took time to build the courage to become colour confident with my interiors, and the first step to doing it was by introducing colour in my home via bold prints and striking framed art.
Read MoreMarch is usually the month when new pieces from the spring/summer home collections start to become available online or in-store to purchase. I’ve seen quite a few interior bits and bobs this season that I’ve really liked, so I thought I would share some of those ‘must-have’ items out for SS19….
Read MoreThe unseasonally good weather we have had this February has made me languish for spring even more than normal. When the New Year begins I always feel that I am just waiting for new buds on the trees, for daffodils to push out the ground and a sign that warmer times are ahead. One of the best ways to anticipate for spring is by freshening up your home with a few new decorative pieces that can help you embrace the season via your decor. All the colour and scent of spring is so enjoyable, why not bring it indoors?
Read MoreI’ve not done a ‘best of’ round up for a while, so this week I thought I’d delve into bed frames. Although the online market is saturated with beds, you always just get pages and pages of the same design. Choice is often limited to the plain wood frame, the metal frame or the fabric option with a button headboard. The 5 bed frames that I want to present to you today go above and beyond the ‘basic bed’ design and are real hero pieces that won’t just disappear in a bedroom decor scheme.
Read MoreWhether you are thinking of installing a whole new kitchen in 2019 or just changing things up a bit, looking at kitchen trend predictions is actually a great way to ensure that you create a kitchen that you love, which also feels current and contemporary. Rather than thinking of trends as styles that go in and out of fashion in a blink of an eye, trend round-ups tend to focus on colours and materials that are elegant, stylish and therefore timeless. This is what Howdens have succeeded in doing with their new kitchen trends e-book for 2019. Spotlighting on four very different kitchen trends, Howdens can help you create your dream kitchen by identifying your core interior style.
Read MoreIn September this year the esteemed paint manufacturer Farrow & Ball released 9 brand new colours to take their palette up to 132 hues. Without looking like I am very late to the party, I held off writing about the colours until they had been used in abundance in ‘real homes’. The thing is with Farrow & Ball press images is they are just so good. They hire the best stylists and produce the most amazing pictures, they could probably rub a dog turd on the wall and it would look like a desirable colour to paint your guest bedroom in. What I really wanted to see was how the colours would look in different types of homes and in different settings. Plus, when I received the press pack (which included sample tins of the 9 new shades) there was one colour in particular, Treron, which I flagged for use on the tongue and groove in my bathroom.
Read MoreSometimes it is the simplest changes that can transform a room: a new cushion to refresh a living space or a new vase as a great focal point on an old table. Our kitchen at home is looking a bit tired, but we are years away from replacing it. Yet our kitchen tap was chipped, leaking and covered in ‘you’ll never be able to remove it in a million years’ limescale, so I decided I wanted to swap it out for something special and new to try and reinvigorate the area. Our old tap was a basic chrome bridge tap - so standard, so simple. If I was going to make an impact with a new tap then I wanted something really exceptional and individual, something that would draw attention as the ‘hero’ piece in the kitchen. Instantly, I thought I would want an instagramable polished brass tap, but as I have been working closely with bathroom & kitchen suppliers Kohler this year I was introduced to their very modern, very sexy Karbon single lever tap.
Read MoreI was unable to attend London Design Festival last week, so instead I just devoured everyone else’s coverage of the event via social media. From all the exhibitions and product launches being covered there was one new collection that for me really stood out - the new Botanical ~Botanica~ papers by wallpaper leaders Cole & Son.
Read MoreAs we are now well over half-way through 2018, it is interesting to look back at the key trends predicted at the start of the year to see what has moved over from being seen as a 'trend', to cementing itself as a key way to successfully design your interior scheme. What on-trend design looks have moved away from being 'fashionable,' to now be seen as classic, sophisticated interior design? Today I want to delve into recently popular bathroom styes that I love and I think have longevity. I'm delighted to be collaborating on this post with bathroom specialists Kohler(who I also love!), looking to how you can create these gorgeous design schemes in your own home with their range of taps, sinks, baths and other fixtures and fittings.
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