Monday Inspiration: Beautiful Spaces

A mix of beautiful rooms for you this week with no particular theme. Last week we needed calming spaces and then shortly after that the world basically exploded and everyone is shouting at everyone else. With just and understandable cause it seems. So here are five rooms. All by clever people, all of whom are worth a follow.

This image above is one of the cleverest things I have seen recently. I have always been reluctant to recommend bench seating because, for me at least, it starts to be uncomfortable after about half and hour. If it’s close to  a wall you can lean back but it’s still not as comfortable as a chair – although I appreciate that a bench takes up much less space and can be tucked under the table. But Medina, of @grillodesigns, came up wtih this idea a few weeks ago and it’s, like all the best ones, so simple and so clever you wonder why we haven’t all thought of it before. Unless you have and it’s just me. It’s basically a bedhead fixed to the wall. That’s it. Genius. Never again will I hesitate to recommend bench seating where space is at a premium.

Paula Sutton lives in a gorgeous house in Norfolk and posts gorgeous pictures of cottage county living. I love how this whole room comes together perfectly and yet it’s not all matchy matchy. The chairs are similar but not a pair, one patterned one plain, and the small gingham checks on the left are picked up in the bigger checks on the right while all geometric patterns, be they stripes or checks love a floral. I’d very happily sit there for the afternoon when it was too hot outside.

Talking of lovely rooms to sit in though, I’d take this one too. And note the pale pink ceiling which just softens the whole space and makes the whole thing look warmer and cosier and more considered than a traditional white ceiling would do. I often come back to pale pink as a great neutral for a ceiling as it goes with so many other colours and Hannah, the owner of this, has already painted her bedroom in a similar shade and is pondering another room too.

Here the blue is softer but the terracotta headboard and wooden floor do the same job as the piano and the pink ceiling above – add warmth and character. This is a great illustration of a plug in bedside lamp too. The stool won’t hold much but the cable on the light is extra long and draped over the wall so it becomes both decorative and practical at the same time. And the velvet panelling on the bed is echoed on the wall.

More panelling in this gorgeous bedroom below belonging to Jasmine Edwards aka @jazzierere who runs oneoffto25, an online art gallery. She often hangs the pieces in her own home and showcases them on instagram so you can get a sense of how they might look in situ which can be so much more helpful than just looking at a cutout image on a screen.

That’s it for today. I hope you have liked these images. I will be back tomorrow with tips on how to future proof your bathroom.