Finding homestyle inspiration

I spent an enjoyable weekend planning some home improvement. We were in the West End on Saturday and popped into my favourite shop, the Orla Kiely shop in Seven Dials. Have you seen her new range of homewares?

There are lovely things but what I really love are the room displays which give you an idea of what her furniture, or a rug, cushion or wallpaper might look like in situ. I took some cheeky photos as we’re planning our lounge makeover this year.

We have a long lounge and dining room where the wall has been knocked down by a previous owner to make one large room. The main features are the lovely windows at one end and French doors, which open on to the garden, at the other. We currently have shutters which give us some privacy but I would love to replace these with curtains for a softer feel and to add some colour to the room.

In our last house we had curtains in every room which I made. It’s been a long time since I had fun choosing the fabric, measuring the windows and stitching them up on my machine. Fortunately I found an online guide to making curtains which gives me confidence I could do it again.

We’re currently choosing a colour palette from which we can choose wallpaper then fabric for curtains and cushions. I think I enjoy this phase more than the actual decorating part. It’s lovely window shopping, flicking through magazines and Pinning inspiration to my Pinterest boards.

I’m not sure if it’s because we’re on the cusp of Spring but I’m really drawn to some of these colours (found in my Orla Kiely colouring book of all places!) and think a combination of sunshine, lichen and charcoal go really well together. I’ve been dropping not-so-subtle hints to my husband so we’ll see what happens. This will be our biggest decorating projects we’ve undertaken in this house but I do love a challenge 🙂

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