10 Beautiful Rooms: The Midlands

Welcome to this week’s edition of 10 Beautiful Rooms and we are continuing our tour of the UK to find the best instagram accounts in the regions. This time it’s The Midlands and what better place to start than with the entrance hall.

Finding the original hall tiles is a rare thing and often the colours are a little too brown for modern tastes. But, be assured, deep dark chocolately brown is coming back so if you have these tiles and have been despairing of how to make them work then now might be the moment. This hall belongs to Theresa Gromski and I think she has half-painted her wall in Railings by Farrow & Ball, which is a deep grey blue black – depending on the light and the time of day and it really brings the colours of the floor out. But if yours are less black then try Tanner’s brown or Bitter Chocolate by Cassandra Ellis. And, a final word on halls – a great way to bring colour is to paint half the wall. If you don’t have a picture rail you can put one in or just use frog tape to make a straight line and paint long at the height you require. This will add colour and drama without making the space too dark.

Moving on to the home of Medina Grillo, queen of DIY and the Ikea hack and another half-painted wall, which turns out to be quite the theme in the Midlands. Medina has masses of ideas from creating underbed storage to wallpapering a floor using fablon.

Now I know a lot of you were saying enough with the dark walls last week but this is still lovely and we were talking about matching radiators to walls last week and this is a prime example. Plus dark walls and art works always wins so it goes in.

And now to Nottinghamshire to the home of Anna whose half-painted diagonal wall is just fabulous.

See her feed for the other half of the wall by the dining room table. It’s a great way to take this concept one step further. After all – who said you had to put one colour of paint over the whole wall. If you have an open-plan space then use paint to zone it and create different areas.

Another two-tone wall but this is a third and two thirds rather than half and it creates a rather elegant look and makes the walls look taller rather than cutting them in half. Note how the pictures are hung half and half rather than either completely above or below.

Over to Nottingham now and the home of Jen Stanbrook from Love Chic Living. I’m always in favour of a patterned floor in a kitchen and hers is fabulous. It’s vinyl from Harvey Maria by the way and it works brilliant to introduce some character into a room that can so often be more about function. The floor shapes are echoed in the hexagonal tiles and the yellow stools really bring the space to life, not forgetting the wooden chopping boards to warm up the monochrome colour scheme.

And now to the home of Hilary Marconetto and this gorgeous pink and grey restful space and  more pink but this time of the soft blush variety with Olivia in Derbyshire. Hilary has teamed hers with shades of teal and blue and Olivia has stuck to the black, white and wood with pink instead of yellow (as Jen did in her kitchen above). It’s a really good starting point for a room and you can change the accent colour as and when you like without having to spend a fortune redecorating the whole space.

Now, with a little geographical dodginess we’re nipping up to Manchester because I haven’t got 10 from the north west and because it’s black and white pattern with a splash of colour used really well and this is, after all, about 10 Beautiful Rooms not just about location. And I hope Alice won’t mind that this is a picture of her bathroom before it was finished – taps and tiling still to be finished.

Finally this kitchen with its impressive splashback wall that could be marble or could be caesarstone but either way is a great back drop to the pendant lights. Kitchens are all about colour at the moment but if you’re sticking with pale tones (and why not) then bring in some added wow factor like this wall or some great lights or handles. Something to make the space sing.

And because I missed her out in last week’s South West post here is the lovely Alice in Scandiland with her gorgeous glass walled room for the 11th room. And because I put Helen Powell from Leamington Spa in to the northern post by accident. So there is a little bit of geographical juggling.

So there we have it. Coming next week East Anglia and the South East. Although they may merge depending on whether I get the atlas out or not.