As we move into the new season and 2019 starts coming to an end, new colours are released by the paint companies and there is a focus on certain shades which are likely to be popular in 2020. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I consistently bang on about the ‘power of paint’. Yet, with a tin of emulsion and a bit of determination, you can transform an entire room with paint in a couple of days (and all for less than fifty quid.) This is why I look forward to and really enjoy the announcement of certain pivotal hues and the release of new paint collections. It provides a whole new opportunity to give your house a new look, or think about what you want to achieve in your home. This could be creating a calming space, or making it feel more modern.

If I say ‘DFS’ to you, what do you think of? Boxing Day sale bargains? Crushed velvet corner sofas? A large retail presence? All this is true, DFS do cater to mainstream taste and are one of the largest suppliers of furniture in the UK (it’s estimated that a quarter of the UK have owned a DFS sofa at one point in their lives). Yet, if you scratch under the surface, you’ll be surprised to learn that this British company, now celebrating its 50th year of business, is incredibly trend-led and forward-thinking with many of its designs. It also still retains the old-school charm of manufacturing via craftsmanship, with the majority of its products being made, by hand, in the UK.

As 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!

My house needed a facelift. Lots of bad British weather, a leaky gutter and rotting windows were just not doing this beautiful Georgian building any justice. A priority was sorting out the front door. Placed perfectly in the centre of the symmetrical exterior, the front door is the focal point when you look at my house from the street. Having not been touched in well over 5 years, the door was faded and cracked. While the conservative, Oxford blue that it once was didn’t give me any pangs of excitement when I looked at it.

This 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.

I’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!

I recently put out one of those handy little Instagram features asking my followers what decorating dilemmas they faced. I wanted to know what people just couldn’t get their head around or what really confused them within the sphere of DIY. The idea was that I would take this feedback and compile a blog post that answered these questions in a clear and simple way. I know myself that when I Google a lot of DIY questions, in return I just get a lot of long, boring videos of ‘pro’s’ in their workshops chatting ‘trade talk’ that makes things even more complicated and harder to grasp. My aim with this new collection of blog posts titled ‘DIY & Decorating Dilemmas’ is to turn that around, make things more straightforward and hopefully, easier to understand.

We are over halfway through the year and summer is in full swing. What I have really enjoyed this year is packing up a picnic basket and putting it in the boot of the car, collecting my son after school and driving with the dog to local, scenic picnic spots to enjoy the warm, late summer afternoons outside together. I have been working with home and garden retailer Grand Illusions for the past few months and I was really excited when I saw their high summer collection which includes hand-blown recycled green glass tumblers, on-trend bamboo tealight holders and earthy bowls with detailed floral patterns. All these pieces are perfect to use for stylish summer picnics or casual summer dining, so I snapped a few bits up to share with you here on the blog.

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.)

Ice-cream and sorbet shades are the key colours in interiors for summer 2019, with minty hues really making my heart flutter! Mint is a really retro colour, so it works perfectly on fun, accent furniture such as drinks cabinets. Both Anthropologie and John Lewis are currently selling mint cabinets and even though I really wanted one for summer cocktails, I couldn’t justify spending a few hundred pounds on a non-essential piece of furniture. Instead, I decided to DIY one using a basic wood IKEA cabinet, paint, some MDF and my trusty Gorilla Glue products.

When you are passionate about interior design, it can take over many areas of your life. My husband never ceases to be amused by the fact that my restaurant decisions are determined by the decor and never the menu. Holiday and hotel choices are decided by the interior offerings. It would therefore come as no surprise that my choice of motor vehicle would be heavily influenced by the way it looks, both inside and out. So, when Citroën contacted me to tell me the interior of their C4 Cactus Hatch had been inspired by well-designed furniture and did I fancy giving it a spin for a few days, I was intrigued to try it out.

When we moved into this house four years ago we inherited what I called ‘The Most Boring Bathroom In The World’. This en-suite was off a room in the basement that we use as my office / guest bedroom. It was adorned in the most basic, large white tiles and had an ivory window. I tried to add a large picture and a few accessories in here but it didn’t really make much of a difference to how good it looked! The ceiling constantly peeled even though the shower was only used about twice a month and when all the tiles started to crack it started looking even worse!

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.