Our Design Blog

So, you have decided to renovate your home. It may be an extension, a loft conversion or a new kitchen, but it will doubtless involve employing some builders and tradespeople to carry out the work for you. You will probably have been thinking about this for some time. You know you need to be prepared; you’ll have spent long hours deciding on all the details which will make the transformation just perfect, and you have (hopefully) created a budget. You may know your numbers, but have you thought about the real cost of renovating?
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Last month, we shared progress on the downstairs of the new build home we have designed and are installing. This month, we will continue with the same home, sharing the progress upstairs. You might remember that our clients had come to us, having bought an off plan home from the developer who was building it for them, to be finished in April this year. These houses are lovely, and whilst it's nice to have a fresh start decor wise, they can feel very soulless and empty if left as the white boxes they are. Our clients had no intention of doing that - they came to us asking for colour, pattern, and more importantly, to help them create a home. We shared the progress in the rooms downstairs in the last blog, so now we are showing you upstairs. Come on in.
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You may have seen our recent blog posts explaining that we have been busy designing and renovating a new build home this year. This has been an exciting process, and it has been great to reimagine a totally blank canvas with white walls in every room, no flooring and bare bulbs. We have been implementing our designs over the past couple of months and things are almost complete, and we’d like to share our progress on this home. Things have really changed from the first day we saw the house, and it’s certainly unrecognisable from that first look. Let’s tour the house room by room.
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Ask any homeowner who has applied for planning permission about the process, and they will probably roll their eyes and tell you a tale of woe, which usually includes a long, drawn out timeline and a lot of money being spent. We have recently had to navigate the planning process for our client's outdoor kitchen project (more to follow on that), and whilst the process was expensive and did take a long time, I’d like to present a different perspective on the business of planning permission.
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On the last blog, we discussed our designs for a large apartment block’s lobby, with all the opportunities and challenges it presented. You might remember that one resident had come to us wanting to brighten up this large entrance space and make it feel more homely, and we agreed we would produce three designs for all 30 of the residents to consider.
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This month’s blog is another design reveal, this time for a new type of space for us - a lobby for a large apartment block in Cardiff. Although strictly speaking this is a residential project, current building regulations mean we have to treat it like a commercial project. With our design, we have followed all the rules on fire safety and materials suitability that we would have for a commercial space, and have relished the challenges presented by this approach.
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This month, we’re revealing the designs for a very special project - a garden room which will be like no other. Garden rooms are a very popular way to add space to a property and are often used as home offices, gyms or a covered place to enjoy the outdoors, but our clients wanted something quite different in theirs.
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You may have seen last month’s blog, where we showcased our designs for the ground floor of our new build home project. This month we will be showcasing the first floor, so you will see the bedrooms, bathrooms and offices. With these designs, we’ve continued the overall colour scheme and stylistic approach we used on the ground floor, making sure that each works with the other rooms in the home, whilst allowing each room to have its own personality.
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If you have been following our social media, you will know that we’ve been busy working on the designs for a new build home currently under construction, which will be ready to move into in early July. It is a lovely four bedroomed home, enticingly called ‘The Cambridge’, built by Redrow, and is part of their heritage collection of houses. It’s a lovely house, has everything a modern family will need and will be comfortable to live in, but, as many people will tell you, a new build home with lower ceilings and rectangular rooms can sometimes lack character and be difficult to personalise.
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As we’re coming towards the end of January and some (if not all) of our New Year’s resolutions may have not made it to the end of the month, I would encourage you not to worry about that or put any additional pressure on yourself. Yes, the start of a new year can be a good time to take stock and look at the things we’d like to change in our lives, but it doesn’t have to be done in January. And I would also say that if you aren’t physically or emotionally ready, then it doesn’t have to be done at all. It’s okay to just ‘be’, and carry on with things the way they are. Life can be difficult, and we all need to be kinder to ourselves.
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This month’s blog is a work in progress of our recent gamer’s bedroom design, which you might have seen on our instagram feed. I think it’s pretty cool, and would have loved a bedroom dedicated to my hobbies when I was 12, so our client's son is one very lucky boy in my opinion. Here’s the story of how it came to be, along with the before and almost after pics of course.
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When I was working as a home designer for John Lewis, I had many clients who loved the designs I produced for them but didn’t know where to start when it came to implementing those designs and coordinating their projects. They would often ask if we could recommend decorators, electricians and plasterers etc, but because we were a retail store, we weren’t able to do that. I found it very frustrating to see people needing help and not being in a position to do anything more for them.
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If you've been reading the blog for a while, you might remember a work in progress post about a project we were calling the Space Savvy Loft Conversion. We finished helping the couple with their loft and hallway spaces, and then went on to help with a nursery and their open plan kitchen, as well as some other bits around the home. We have recently completed a photo shoot of this colourful home, and are ready to share it with you now.
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We’ve been working with our clients on the Unique Family Home project for two and a half years now, with the scope of work being added to as we go along. The latest completed part involved designing and installing a new en suite for the main bedroom. You might have read the work in progress blog on this room a few months ago, but we are now ready to reveal the final space.
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Many of you may know the history of The Vulcan pub, from its humble origins in what was the Newtown area of Cardiff, and the long battle to save the building, to its eventual demolition and rebuilding at St Fagans, the Museum of Welsh Life. The rebuilt Vulcan opened at St Fagans as a working pub on May the 11th 2024, almost exactly 12 years after it closed its doors, and I was lucky enough to visit in May. It was such an interesting and uplifting visit that I thought I’d share it with you.
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I was in a consultation meeting with a client recently, and we were discussing curtains for her living room as part of the whole design concept. She’d been thinking about this project for a while, and she had lots of ideas and swatches of fabrics she liked. She showed me her favourite one, and although it was beautiful, I had to tell her I wouldn’t suggest using this fabric for her curtains as it was made from 100% linen.
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When we first started working on our Unique Family Home project in February 2022, the plan was to get the house ready for the clients to move in and save the larger projects (such as new bathrooms) for later. But whilst we were working on converting the garage to a gym, a leak from the main en suite above changed our plans...
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One of my interior design colleagues in the States recently had a phone call with a potential client, and everything seemingly went well. A week went by without her hearing from the client, so she followed up to see if they still wanted help, and the client replied: “We are trying the AI approach at first to see if it meets our needs” So what does this mean? Can AI really replace the work of an interior designer?
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When all the stress and mess of your home renovation is over and you realise that you can’t fit that dream corner sofa where you thought it could go, or that there’s no plug socket where you need to plug a lamp in, you may start to worry that you’ve made a mistake. If only someone had helped you with these decisions before you started the building work…
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This month we are having a closer look at one of our recent projects, and this one is quite a transformation - from damp and a little unloved, to a gorgeous interior with bespoke storage and bags of character.
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As an interior design studio, we offer different types of services to our clients, which vary based on the type of help they need from us. Most of our projects will start with a design consultation, which is the first step in working with us. If you haven’t used an interior designer before, you might be wondering what a design consultation is, and what exactly happens during one.
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As you probably know, the way we choose to decorate our homes can really affect our mood and our quality of life, but it doesn’t all come down to the way they look. It’s also about how our homes sound.
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It feels like this blog post has been a very long time coming. If you have been reading our past blogs, you’ll know that we have been working with a lovely family on their home for a year and a half now. The home is a work in progress as we are continuing to fine tune it for our clients, but we have taken photos of the rooms which are finished and now is the time to reveal them to you.
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As I mentioned in part one of the blog about our Unique Family Home project, the basics for the house were completed before the family moved in, meaning we decorated, furnished and added window dressings before they arrived. The plan was always that the bespoke or handcrafted elements of our design were to be completed after their move in date, because they would take longer to design and make.
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Good interior design can certainly improve our lives, and it is integral to our wellbeing and ease of day to day living. I’m not talking about the kind of interior design which involves choosing paint colours to go on your walls and sourcing pieces of furniture for your home. Of course, these things matter, and will definitely make you feel better, but what I’m really talking about is the positive impact that good design can have on your everyday life.
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If you have been following us on social media you will know that we have been working on a large whole home project since March 2022. This project originally began with the task of completing decoration works and adding blinds and furniture before the family moved into their new home. It has since grown, with the most recent work being to design and install a home gym in one half of the double garage which is attached to the property.
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With TV sizes getting larger and larger these days, most people struggle with where to place their TV in the room. If the room has a chimney breast, the alcoves on either side of it are an obvious place to put the TV, which can work well. But if you have a larger TV and it isn’t going to fit in an alcove, where can it go?
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You may have seen from last month’s blog post that as part of the work on our ‘unique family home project’, we designed and installed a pretty special bespoke chandelier in the hallway. I thought you might be interested to see how this came about, and the steps that it took to get the piece made and installed.
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My job can be so varied, with lots of different aspects to it, and most people seem to find it quite fascinating, so I thought I’d share what I do behind the scenes a little. I decided to keep a diary of a week of my working life, so you can see what I really do, and how glamorous it really is!
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Whenever I’ve been interviewed, either for TV or a magazine article, I usually get asked where I get my ideas and inspiration from. When I’m working on a specific project I would say that my inspiration mostly comes from conversations I have with my clients, but as a visual creative, I like to keep things fresh by keeping a mental note of interesting and inspiring things whenever I see them.
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This month’s blog is the final reveal of my own living room project. The finished article has been a long time in the making, since I first began designing it back in 2020 (I seem to suffer from the same syndrome as all people in the trade, that work on your own house always goes to the bottom of the list). You can read more about the problems I was trying to solve here, but here’s a quick recap.
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I was contacted in February this year by a lovely young family who were moving from overseas back to the Cardiff area. They needed help getting their newly purchased home ready for them to move in to in July, and as they weren’t living in the area at the time, they asked me and my team to organise everything.
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Decorex, the interior design trade fair, is back! It’s held every year at the beginning of October, but for obvious reasons the last two years it was held virtually, and this is the first year it’s been back in real life. And I have to say, it is joyous to attend in person. I ‘attended’ some of the online events over the last couple of years, and it wasn’t the same at all.
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Hands up who uses Pinterest? I know lots of people do - there are 16.7 million monthly users in the UK, lots of our clients use it, and we do too. It can be a great tool for you to see which interior styles you like, to gather your ideas together, and to help you create a ‘mood board’ of how you would like your home to look.
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As we’ve been living life through the lens of an online world for some time now, partly because of the pandemic, and partly because of the way our shopping habits and high streets have changed, I have been thinking about the importance of the physical world versus the digital or online world. Many people (including me) love the convenience of shopping online for things, and that you can now buy literally anything you need easily and quickly.
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This month I’m sharing a personal work in progress with you - the transformation of my living room, which has been planned for a good while now, and dreamt about even longer. When we moved in to our house 17 years ago, the walls were painted cream and there were ill-fitting cream curtains on an even more ill-fitting pole (you can read about how I solved that problem in this blog post).
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This month, I have a special guest writer - my husband! He recently moved into a new office, and asked me for help with choosing paint colours for it. He decided to share the experience with you, as painting the new office has transformed it from a frankly boring room, into somewhere he feels comfortable and energised to work in. It also looks good on Zoom, which is essential these days.
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Regular readers of my blog (or anyone that has ever talked to me about paint) will know that I am a big fan of the brand Little Greene. I love the depth and range of their colour palette, the fact that the paint is vegan, and that it covers and performs so well. They have just released a new paint collection, and I’m more excited than usual, because this one is a little different.
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This month, we have an exciting guest post from Nia Wyn Rossiter, founder, director and interiors expert at Penderyn Antiques, who has written a guide to choosing and using antiques in our homes.
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A fab young couple came to me way back in December 2020, needing help with their planned loft conversion and hallway works. The builders were already in and working on the new porch area, and were due to start on the loft conversion, which would include the main bedroom and an ensuite, in the next couple of months.
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Recently, I have been rewatching some of the TV series ‘The Great Interior Design Challenge’ as I find it fascinating to see the amateur designers let their imaginations loose, and I love seeing the many varied schemes they come up with. I enjoy watching the show, but the main challenge for the designers seemed to be the very small £1000 budget they were given to furnish, decorate and renovate each room.
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Back in July last year, I started a new project to transform a living room. The couple I was working with had recently moved into a new home, and were keen to make it feel right for them. The previous owners had done a lot of work to the house including building a kitchen extension, which the new owners loved, so there wasn’t a lot for me to do there. The separate living room was the main problem, and needed some work.
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With Christmas and New Year around the corner, it is the season for looking back at what we have achieved over the current year, and for plotting our hopes and dreams for the next one. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about my creative background and how I came to be an interior designer, and what I would like to do with those skills next year.
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Today I’m excited to be sharing the final photos of the Victorian terraced house I’ve been working on for over a year and half, known as the Pontcanna Project. It has been a long journey, but we are finally done, and the homeowner is delighted and now showing off the house to her friends, neighbours and family.
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This time last year a young couple got in touch to say that they were in the process of buying a new house and needed help. It was a classic situation - they knew the house needed work and had just found out that it needed damp proofing as soon as possible. Apart from a lot of mess, this was an opportunity for the couple to rethink the layout of the internal walls, and decide how they wanted to use the space.
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An interior designer can help you with many aspects of renovating or upgrading your home, but one of the most popular (and fun) services we offer is to help a client choose colour schemes, as this can be tricky to do on your own. What if, instead of hiring an interior designer, you could have colour guidance from an expert, with everything you need in one box?
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In my last newsletter, I asked you, my lovely readers, to share your design dilemmas with me, so I could offer up my thoughts and suggestions on how to solve them. I’ve gathered up a few of your questions, and will do my best to answer as many as I can in this post (there were a few I couldn't get to, so I'll do another post soon).
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When it comes to renovating our homes, there are a huge number of things to think about - budgets, colours, flooring, furniture and finishes, and lighting, as well as organising any building work which needs to be done. Keeping on top of all these things can often feel like a mammoth task, so understandably, we don’t really want to increase the pressure by adding in anything else.
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You might have seen that so called ‘designer paint’ has been in the news recently, as the British paint brand Farrow & Ball has just been sold to a Danish company for £500 million. This prompted a couple of articles voicing some strong opinions on the brand, with both Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen in the Daily Mail and The Telegraph’s Shane Watson calling time on the brand’s long reign as the go to choice for the tasteful elite.
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Lockdown was stressful for all sorts of reasons, and many of them were unexpected, but the one thing that I wasn’t expecting at all was that I would finally crack and hire a cleaner. This got me thinking about my own job, and our approach to hiring people who have more knowledge and experience than us. There are definitely times when it really is best to hire a professional.
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This month, I’m writing about another work in progress which truly is still in progress - there are remaining bits and bobs to be installed and/or bought, but the clients have kindly shared some update pics with me, so I thought I’d show them to you. When I was contacted by this lovely family needing help it was before the pandemic began and we couldn’t have dreamed of what was to come.
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When I have colour consultations with clients, we spend lots of time thinking about colours for the walls, and then choose complementary or similar colours for the woodwork. Next, I often suggest choosing a colour for the ceiling. Lots of clients are surprised by this approach as they think that ceilings have to be painted white.
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I’m sharing another work in progress this month, a small but perfectly formed bathroom. Just like the last work in progress blog, the space is actually finished but due to the current lockdown I can’t go to take the final photos. But I can share the design and some pics the clients kindly sent me with you.
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When a potential client gets in touch, I always ask them if they have worked with an interior designer before. I often find that they haven’t, and they're not sure how I can help them. It’s understandable that people aren’t sure what I do - there are literally thousands of interior designers across the country and they all offer different services or describe their skills in different ways. So what does an interior designer do, and how can you choose the right one for you?
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This month I want to share a project with you which I absolutely loved working on. It’s actually finished, so not technically a work in progress, but I will be putting the finished photos up on my website in the next couple of weeks so I thought I’d share the process with you and give you some background to it.
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So, you’re ready to hire an interior designer to help you with your home. You have a look around for potential designers who fit the bill, and find a few who look professional and experienced. Do you have a look at their portfolio on their website, to see what kind of style their design work is? Or do you think that it doesn’t matter what styles they’ve produced before because they are designers and will design for you?
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In July of 2019, I was given a referral by some great clients, who said that their friend might need some help with her home. When I went to meet her, she had clearly been thinking about what she needed and was ready to hit the ground running. She wanted to move her kitchen (which was currently in the smallest room on the ground floor) to the largest room, which was being used as the living room.
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So, you’ve been thinking about making some changes to your home and have talked it over (endlessly) with anyone who’ll listen. You know how you’d like the end result to look, you’ve got your finances in place and you just need someone to make all your dreams a reality. Time to sit back and let someone else take control now, right? Sadly, no. You need to find a good builder who understands your vision, your wishlist and can make it all happen on time and on budget (or as close as possible).
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I’d thought I’d share a project of my own which I’ve been working on during lockdown - my office. I started running my business from this room as it’s the converted loft at the top of the house (so it’s nice and quiet). The only problem was that it hadn’t been decorated since we moved in and was a very boring shade of beige.
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I think we might all be in need of a little escapism right now, and whilst actually going on an actual summer holiday might seem a distant dream, I thought I’d share something which makes me almost feel like I could be on that longed for holiday. Almost exactly two years ago, I was contacted by some absolutely lovely clients who I’d worked with before.
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As a lot of us are spending loads more time at home right now, many of us will have decided to get our homes in order and that now is the time to finally replace that lumpy, old, saggy sofa. Large, expensive items like sofas, beds and mattresses are investment pieces of furniture that we don’t buy very often, so when we do, we understandably want to get it right and not make any mistakes.
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As you can imagine, this is a question I get asked a lot. You might have recently moved into your new home, or maybe you feel like you need a change. We’re all spending a lot more time staring at our walls during the current situation, and paint is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to really make a room feel like your own.
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With everything that’s happening at the moment, I’ve been thinking about how important it is for us to feel connected with each other. Acts of kindness and sharing are more important than ever, as is letting others know that we appreciate them. So, this month I wanted to share some really lovely feedback I’ve had from clients who have used my online design service.
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It’s time for another blog post from me, and this month I have exciting news - I have a guest blogger! Hayley Baddiley from British stoneware brand Denby (I’m sure you all know their lovely kitchenware and crockery) has written a piece about conscious kitchen design.
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Now that we’ve made it through the shortest day of the year and the days are getting longer, I find myself yearning for the light of Spring. Things just seem easier when we are surrounded by light, so brightening up the dark days of winter is still very much on our minds. We depend on artificial light at this time of year, and the type of light we see can really affect our mood. So how do we get it right and make ourselves feel happy instead of glum? It’s all about the type of lighting we choose, and that starts with the humble light bulb.
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I've had a really busy but great year which was more than I could have wished for. Here are some of the highlights, and I also want to say a big thank you to all my lovely clients, suppliers and tradespeople who I rely on to keep my business going. Thank you!
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Decorex is the biggest trade fair for the interiors world, held every year in London. I went along to find new suppliers and see the trends and new products we'll all be wanting in our homes next year.
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I was recently asked to help this charity to improve the public areas of their building. They wanted to make them feel more welcoming and also to help the people using the centre to feel valued. I was really pleased to be able to come up with a design for them. Read on to see the plans and hear all about the design choices I made.
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A short blog post about how I added some more colour to my hallway by painting a lamp base in an orange-red shade, using chalk paint.
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This project isn't quite finished, but I'm really happy with progress so far, so thought I'd share it with you, along with a little bit about my design process.
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When we moved into our house I had to find window dressings for two large bay windows which both worked practically and were affordable - not an easy task. Here's what I came up with, and how much it cost.
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Some people called me brave, some people said it would be great publicity, but I just thought it would be fun. Here's what happened when I let five local property gurus snoop around my house.
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Bay windows are beautiful, grand features but they can be difficult when it comes to choosing curtains or blinds. In this post, I show you the options and discuss the pros and cons of each one.
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The new year is a time when we often think about improving our homes - here's my step by step guide for planning those changes, to make sure your projects run smoothly.
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I finally got around to this project - making my Ikea cupboard look more glamorous by painting it with Annie Sloan chalk paint, adding wallpaper to the front and changing the handles.
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A look at the predicted colour trends for interiors next year, how those colours are supposed to make us feel, and how we'll be using them in our homes.
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My pick of the latest fabric and wallpaper collections, with an explanation of the inspiration behind the collections, and their potential uses in today's homes.
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Have you ever wondered why the paint on your walls doesn't look like the paint colour on the paint chart? Read more to find out how to make sure you get the colour you wanted.
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I'm a lover of colour, and here's a blog post about my current favourite colour, which is 'Pleat' from The Little Greene Paint Company.
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Whilst I was working as a Home Design Stylist for John Lewis, I was asked by the estate agent Moginie James to write a checklist for people selling their homes. It's my guide to making your home look it's best and for presenting it well to prospective buyers.
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