When I covered how I repaired my flaky, peeling bathroom ceiling on Instagram stories recently, I had so many messages about it that I decided to document the process over here on the blog. While this will not be my most glamorous blog post, it will sure beat all the badly filmed ‘boring bloke in a bathroom’ You Tube videos I had to endure to learn how to carry out this DIY task myself!

If 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.

For the past two days I have been in attendance at the Chelsea Flower Show: the world-renowned, quintessentially British, annual celebration of all things horticultural. It has been a delight. As a lover of colour and a pretty flower, there is nowhere better to soak-up a sunshine filled day. The show is also attended by the creative elite - from interior and furniture designers to actors and musicians - the show provides incredible inspiration and sows the seed (if you will) to many new designs and ideas. This year there were a few key themes, messages and colours which I think will infiltrate the way we design and style our homes, plus affect the purchases we make.

Paint is a powerful tool. With paint, you can make a smaller room feel much larger just by choosing the right shade. You can also ‘hide’ ugly items such as radiators by painting them in the same colour as the wall behind it. In my hallway, I wanted the reverse side of my front door to feel much grander. It’s a beautiful door and I wanted to draw as much attention to it as possible! Apart from just painting it an attention-grabbing bight teal, I also tricked the eye into thinking it is bigger by painting over the door frame and onto the wall.

Having previously painted the back of my front door this vivid turquoise colour, I really wanted to make the most of this attention-grabbing entryway so decided to create a dried flower wreath that would stand out against the bold hue.

Clear acrylic or Perspex furniture and home accessories are brilliant if you want your room to feel spacious, uncluttered and airy. The fact that you can ‘see-through’ the piece means that it does not feel bulky or chunky in a space. In my new home office, the room is quite small and my new desk is so beautiful, the last thing I wanted to do was cover it up. I did, however, require a few organisational desk accessories, so decided to create this DIY acrylic tray.

Two years ago I wrote a post on this blog all about a kitchen company who had blown me away when I had seen their kitchen unit drawer and door fronts used in projects across Pinterest and Instagram. I’d never seen anything like it - there were baby blue doors with polished gold handles, scalloped cloud-front patterns and deep green units teamed with gold metal splashbacks. The company was Naked Doors, a Norfolk based kitchen supplier and part of the Naked Kitchens group, who have since been featured in every decent newspaper ‘Home’ supplement and interiors magazine going. Yet, it wasn’t just the interesting designs and coloured fronts which made Naked Doors so appealing, it was the fact that they sold good quality replacement cabinet doors and drawer fronts for existing kitchen units (or, off the shelf IKEA unit carcasses). You didn’t have to purchase a whole new kitchen to achieve the very desirable, contemporary kitchen you’d pinned to your ‘kitchen inspo’ board.

This hallway reveal is really a tale of two designs. The upstairs landing is pretty, pink and floral as planned (you can read more about that and see all the ‘before’ pictures here). While the the lower floors are more contemporary and the colour choices were only decided on halfway through the decorating process. For this project I decided that the skirting, doors, windows and coving would be made key features using colour, while the walls would simply be the backdrop. This is in reverse to how the hallway looked before, which was the traditional ‘colour on the walls + white woodwork’ look. The main aim of this makeover was to add some much needed interest to the space and while I had considered adding mouldings and panelling, I felt it would be too imposing on the narrow area. The period doors and and original coving were great features, so it was these that were to ‘sing’.

I’m delighted to reveal my mini home office makever today on the blog! On my previous post, I talked about how the shared home office I had with my husband wasn’t panning out, while at the same time, the ‘guest room’ in the basement was hardly being used and had turned into a dumping ground. With the help of some amazing and generous companies, especially West Elm, I have now turned this space into my own home office and I LOVE IT!!

In recent years I have really taken to having a little bit of Easter decor around the house to celebrate the season. Rather than a lot of Easter bunnies and chicks, I prefer to create something a bit more grown up to place in the window. These 3D paper decorations are cheap and easy to make, plus they are really effective when hung on blossom branches (real or faux) to create a decorative spring scheme in the home.

So it might seem like it’s all talk and no action round these parts - my last post was on a home office and en-suite makeover yet to be revealed - but sometimes projects and opportunities just overlap! Today, I want to talk about my plans for a makeover to my hallway, which has never had much attention and has therefore never really worked. As I have decorated around the house, the hallway has become more of an issue as this is the space that flows between each of these new rooms. Each room feels unrelated and disconnected from the hall, when really it should be an introduction to each separate space.

Two years ago I did a ‘before and after’ blog post on creating a home office that both my husband and myself were going to share. As a musician, he was often away travelling and I had only just started this blog, so just blogged as and when for fun. Fast forward two years, he is working from home most of the year and I am running a design consultation business alongside this blog. The shared space was just not working for us anymore. He filled the room with musical paraphernalia and it became a shotgun game to who got to use the desk. I started to think we might be outgrowing the house, when it occurred to me that we had the space, we just were not using it efficiently.

March 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….

If you have or know a child that is dinosaur-mad, then this 3D gallery wall DIY is a really sustainable and budget-friendly way to create a fun display in their bedroom. All you need are a few second-hand plastic dinosaur toys, some old frames, mounting card and ‘Gorilla Super Glue Precise Gel.'

The 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?

If there is one thing that I love just as much as interiors (not counting my child and y’know…gin..) it is fresh flowers. My home does not feel complete without fresh blooms perched in the middle of the table or presented on the mantle. People often ask me what is the quickest and most budget-friendly way that they can make a room feel inviting and homely and I always tell them to invest in a beautiful vase brimming with blossoming new stems. What is even better than buying your own flowers is having someone gift you them, so I was delighted when Marks & Spencer popped round with a number of their new gifting bouquets for me to review, as well as give advice on what bouquets are perfectly suited to certain celebratory occasions throughout the year. It is important to remember that flowers are very personal, so you should always pick the right bouquet that will match your recipients personality as well as the occasion. If this all sounds very confusing then don’t worry, read on for my top tips for picking the perfect bunch….