Happy Monday (or whenever you are reading this) and welcome to this week’s edition of 10 Beautiful Rooms. This week we are starting off with two rooms from the gorgeous home of stylist Kay Prestney whose gorgeous loft shows you that with a simple palette of black and white it’s possible to create plenty of interest and style by adding lots of different textures and patterns.
She has stuck to the same palette downstairs with a mix of vintage and industrial and again sticking to a very simple colour palette but it works because there are so many different materials from vintage to industrial, metal and wood, sheepskin and cotton, pattern and plain.
Moving on to this home, which was featured in Elle Decor. The colours are largely the same but look how different the overall effect is. Two tiny splashes of colour in the form of throws on the sofa but I’m not sure they actually bring anything to the party, and the overall effect might have been stronger without them. Mind you – zebra print – perfect for those who think leopard might be becoming a little clichéd and also perfect for those of use who prefer the dashing stripes of the zebra.
Below is a restaurant in west London which also creates a warm and friendly vibe with its scrubbed pine tables but note also the vintage rugs, leather club chairs and, of course, the plants. That’s such a key look at the moment. It will swing back the other way eventually but I think plants are here to stay for a while. If you can’t, or won’t, then do consider adding a bit of green to your decor in the form of pattern and print. That, I think will be more of a fad. As much as I love all that banana leaf wallpaper if you’re someone who only likes to decorate once every ten years then I’d steer clear.
Behold the power of the vintage rug again in this image by interior designer Dee Campling. Her client wanted to keep the antique table so Dee introduced modern chairs in black to anchor the space and bring it up to date and then painted the walls in Farrow & Ball’s new grey Worsted before adding a vintage rug for warmth and pattern.
Back to a minimal palette for this Swedish house now. Obviously I love the glass wall – this has been put up just to divide a large space and create a home office area without cutting it off and creating two smaller, darker rooms. It’s a good idea although I think it might come in more expensively than you hoped. Still, if you live in an open plan space or have one large room that needs to multi-task this is worth considering.
Although we didn’t, in the end, paint our bedroom dark grey, it will always be a great colour for a bedroom. Here, the effect of the walls has been lightened with blush pink bedding and white flowers. It’s not for everyone but it can look great in the right room – this one has high ceilings and large windows so it works.
Below is another home office, in the same house as the bedroom above, but this time created in a corner, which, if your windows are in the right place is another one to consider. The top one has no windows so a glass wall was a better solution.
Or perhaps you would prefer to replace the solid walls of a small room with a row of glass doors to let in more light. This is, perhaps, the most practical of all the solutions. So often we designate the smallest room in the house (well all right the second smallest) to be the home office and then wonder why we spend so much time at the kitchen table or don’t want to go there. If you need a home office for more than the occasional spot of weekend admin, consider what it needs to make it work for you and create accordingly. That way you will get a return on your investment because you will use the space.
In our last house I used the spare room under the eaves as my office for many years. It was dark with a tiny window and I was constantly bashing my head on the sloping roof. Add to that that it was the overflow storage space, and it was no wonder I spent my days on a laptop downstairs.
Finally though, I thought you’d enjoy this as a final picture. Yes, it’s a sitting room with a life size horse lamp behind the sofa. I think it’s rather fabulous no?
Mind you, the owners have put it in a position where they don’t have to look at it all the time, which may be the key to its success.
I agree about the stripey orange throw It throws the whole room. But the little pop of orange coloured flower in the corner works great.
I have a bit of a thing about horses – ok a lot of a thing. They are everywhere in my house so in theory the full size horse lamp would indeed be fabulous, in practice there is nowhere I could put it that didn’t entail vaulting over it from time to time, so I’ll have to make do with my vintage horse lamp (about the size of a kitten) for now!