Most people brainstorm house projects and start with the kitchen, as it’s the most used room in the home. It’s easy to write a plan for a kitchen because it’s always simple to see what a kitchen needs to make it better. There is a room that often is neglected, and that’s the living room, despite the time spent in there.

Designing a living room can be a big job. You’ve flipped through all the magazines, you’ve been staring at paint swatches until you think your eyes are bleeding and there are so many accessory options they now look all the same. Never fear though! You CAN love your living room and we’re going to teach you how with these five amazing tips:

Mix Not Match

Everyone loves to match up their colours, which suits a living room so well. What you should do though, to throw things in the air a little is mix solid colours with patterns. Too much matching can really make a living room look, well, boring! You may not see it at first – we all love different shades of blue – but after a while it doesn’t have much of a personality. Add some patterned throw pillows like these on your block colour sofa and give it some life.

Bring In Nature

Picture your living room in a beautiful, minimalist shade of white. Everything is white toned and you have accenting creams and beige. Classy? Yes. Colourful? Not so much. It may have seemed like a great idea to whip out the Wagner Power Painter Plus and make sure you have an even, modern colour, but without any colour pop you have a fairly boring room. If throws and pillows aren’t your thing, bring a little nature inside and add potted plants around the room and vases of flowers on the windowsills. Breathe life into the room with some beautiful green plants.

Light The Way

Never rely on your overhead lighting fixtures purely for the room. Lamps and uplighters with dimmer switches should be absolutely bought to give your living room a twist. While it’s great to have a great artsy fixture for your ceiling lights, uplighters can really change the mood of the room, especially if you have attached dimmer switches.

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Colour Me Happy

While we think it would be a lounge mistake to stick to the same block colours, we do think that you should stick to the same colour palette. It makes it so much easier to plan a room in its entirety as you can concentrate on just one or two complimentary colours instead of being distracted by tons of colour all at once.

Be People Aware

You may not just share your home with yourself. Think about the amount of tread and traffic you get through your carpets and make sure that you choose materials that match. If you’re used to children running around, perhaps don’t go for the thick, white rug!

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These five tips should help you liven up your living room and love it in the way it needs to be loved. Make it comfy, cosy and somewhere you can kick back and relax in peace.

 

*this is a sponsored post.

Mansions and rambling estates have never appealed to me. Whilst they’re romanticised by the Austin sisters, in reality, I’ve always been far more attracted to cosy little spaces.

And owning my own little space is slowly creeping closer. I’m dreaming about how I’ll decorate it and what furniture I’ll scavenge and recycle.  I know I’ll probably end up with a one bed maisonette, but I want to make it the best god damn looking maisonette ever. I’m looking at inspiration in all places. From minimalist layouts to log cabins.

So when Truedor recently got in touch and asked me to pick my favourite amazing spaces from George Clarke’s book, I thought it was as good a time as any to start piecing together some design inspo.

I’ve picked my top three favourite  projects from the book where I plan to steal a lot of ideas from.

The Airstream

To me, the airstream motor home is a much more attractive style than your ordinary, ‘plastic fantastic’ caravan. This couple created the home of their dreams from a 1954 model on wheels. They installed reclamation yard pieces into the curves of the airstream. Things like old fruit crates, doors, a wood-burning stove (my ideal item) and many other units. The kitchen is spacious for a galley with aged patina wood and other mismatched features. It’s just perfect really. An attractive kitchen for a tiny abode.

The seating area is also large at the back end of the caravan with Peruvian style linen padded cushions and furnishings. If I ever travel the country, I would want to do so in this. The couple now use it as their home which I imagine can be quite challenging yet humbling for two people.

You can find out more about this project here

Shore Cottage Studio

If I ever have a holiday home or live by the sea, this is how I would want my place to look; just like the Shore Cottage Studio. Note that it’s a studio, so it’s been designed and renovated with an artist’s space in mind.

It lets in plenty of natural light and a lot of the furniture has been made from re-appropriated objects, like the wooden pallet table, which has ‘artist’ written all over it. When I was at uni, the majority of my sculptural artwork was created from found objects so I imagine my very first place will too. Plus I’ve been upcycling a lot more of storage hacks too.

Being next to the sea, it’s obvious that the surroundings have influenced the interior design from blues to shells and from driftwood to things washed ashore.

Basically, this is the art studio (and home) of my dreams. I’m pretty sure I’d sleep here just so I could wake up and immediately get on with some work.

Gypsy Wagon

The gypsy wagon project looks like a fire warden’s nightmare. But to me, the all wooden exterior is immediately charming and very romantic. It makes me want to jack everything in and go live in the wilderness tomorrow. I’d just have to keep the camp fire a fair distance from my bed.

This photo of Wanderlusts Gypsy Caravans is courtesy of TripAdvisor

The people behind this beauty on wheels actually run a horse drawn caravan business where city dwellers can escape the rat race and rent out something similar. The couple, who are keen musicians, plan to use this caravan when they travel through France and will perform from the units very own stage (that’s right, it has an in-built stage!).

This photo of Wanderlusts Gypsy Caravans is courtesy of TripAdvisor

The interior is replete with a Queenie wood-burning stove and mezzanine beds on an alternating wooden strut base so it can become a double bed. A lot of the decoration has been carved by hand with swallows on the back to represent freedom and flight, horses on the front to symbolise strength and power and with snails on the bottom to reference how a travelers takes his home with him.

So after picking these top three, I’m certain I’ll be incorporating a lot of found and ornate pieces of wood in my soon-to-be first home.

Have you got any ideas for your interior design projects. I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Choosing the right bedding to match your bedroom color scheme is not as big a challenge as you might think. However, before I even start to re-decorate a room, I have to get the basics right first. I check to see if the room could do with a new carpet or different flooring? What’#s the condition of the walls like? Could they do with a new lick of paint or poly filler? And for bedrooms, I check whether I might need a new mattress too.

If your mattress is seven years old or worse, it’s most probablky be damaging your posture and causing a bad night’s sleep. Take the time to invest in a new mattress now. I recently bought a cheap mattress online at CutPriceMattress it’s a new firm super king size mattress set for a fraction of what I would have paid at the local retail mattress center.  

How to choose the the right bedding for you

Pairing linen with furniture

The first thing I look at is bed linens. Styles with straight lines harmonize with other furniture in the bedroom and offer a contemporary and clean look.  If you don’t want to keep your bedding for a few years, chose colors that create a serene mood and are easy to look at. This way the style will never date. 

Tips for the minimalist

If you want to keep the style of your bedroom minimalist,  I recommend going with solid colors. Just one solid color works great, especially soft blues and some white. This color combination provides both a cool and soft mood, while giving the bedroom that uncluttered look. Be sure that you cover the box spring with a white sheet that matches perfectly with your fitted sheets. Then all you need to do is tuck the bed covers and the top sheets behind the bed rails to create that clean look.

If you like pattern and bold styles

Once you have your sheets and comforter, mix things up a little with decorative pillows and throws. I love the Boho Moroccan style right now, and even though you might think the colors and patterns might clash with a clean light blue and white set, you would be surprised how amazing it really looks. Tailored designs and colourful accessories can bring together the 21st century and wild color scheme of the bohemian style nicely.

 

One thing I love doing with my bedroom set is creating a comfy pillowscape when I make the bed. Prop up the large square pillow up against your sleeping pillow, then arrange rows of smaller decorative pillows from big to small.

Now your bedroom matches your bedding and you can feel more comfortable in your room. The key here is incorporating as much as your personality as possibly while keeping things clean and contemporary.

*this is a collaborative post with Omar Nawaz

Anyone who has ever lived with me will know that I am both a hoarder and messy. Probably the worst combination. Being a hoarder breeds messiness but my magpie ways are a bit of a hangover from my art student days. I’ve got a little bit tidier as I’ve got older and got into a “grown up” relationship but I know I’m still messy by most people’s standards – especially my boyfriend’s who I’m eternally grateful to for putting up with me.

So when Room 4 Interiors, who sell stylish furniture solutions, got in touch with me and asked if I would like to take part in a Blogger desk challenge,  I thought, perfect. My desk could do with  a makeover and a good tidy as it’s constantly messy. It drives me mad. Plus, I thought I could combine some of the ideas I had from my Bedroom Storage Makeover upcycling competition.

The challenge

Here are the guidelines from Room 4 Interiors Desk Challenge:

“We would like to challenge bloggers and writers to a desk makeover. With just £20 could you find creative, stylish and modern ways to transform their desk? The possibilities are endless and we would like to see what you can do….take a picture of your desk before and after, post it onto your blog telling your readers what you did, how you did it and how much it came up too with a link to Room 4 Interiors as the challenger. Remember to share your before & after pic onto Twitter with hashtag #Room4DeskChallenge”.

Storing my cotton reels neatly is a really big problem I have right now. I use cotton often for my projects and so I decided to upcycle an object into a cotton reel holder.

As the challenge states, I need to share a before and after picture. This is my desk. Before I created the cotton reel holder. I can’t believe I’m sharing this picture, I’m so embarrassed at the state it’s in:

My work space doubles up as many things: a make shift photography studio, hence the lights and the white paper, a place to make my RagnBow bow ties as well a holding space for any other projects I have going on. It’s needs organising!

Here’s how I made my cotton reel holder.

Step One: Source a Plank of Wood

I scavenged an old oak draw at a local junk shop and took the front panel off from the back box. It was heading for the fire so I saved it’s life 🙂

Step Two: Deer Stencil and Spray Paint

The oak panel is real solid piece of wood and I like the grain but I wanted to add some stencil detail to bring it back to life.

Step Three: Add Nails to Hold the Cotton Reels

In between the Deers I plotted out where I wanted the nails to go to hold the cotton reels. 

Step four: Draw Handles

I wanted to keep some elements of the draw so I reattached some cute cat draw handles. I will use these to hang ribbons and other pieces of equipment from.

Step five: Add the Cotton Reels and Voila, the Finished Product

Here’s what the upcycled draw looks like finished and in situ:

How much did it cost?

Here’s a breakdown of the costs:

• Draw front: free
• Draw handles: £7.99 including postage
• Deer stencil: £7.59 including postage
• Nails: £2.90 for 50

Total: £18.48

I’m just under budget but it would have probably been over budget if I had used a new oak draw to upcycle.

What do you think of my make? Have you ever upcycled anything to save space and help declutter?

*Room 4 Interiors gave me £20 as a budget for this project.