search for: do less harm

Happy Monday to you all and welcome to our weekly stroll through some beautiful rooms that might give you inspiration for your own. This week we are mostly looking at reclaimed materials for floors. If I didn't have floorboards and rugs, and if I owned my fantasy Italian house then I would definitely fill the

Welcome back to the regular househunter slot after last week's Italian extravagance. That said, there were lots of inquiries so fingers crossed we will be visiting that at some point in the future. But for now we're back on more familiar ground with this pretty Victorian house in London. And the reason I wanted to

Well come on then own up? Who's spent the weekend cheating on instagram, twitter and blogs with the new app Threads? Me first? Yes, yes I have. And I have to say I rather like it. Having given up on the toxic cesspool that is Twitter some years ago (even this blog has somehow disconnected

I was going to show you a pretty flat in central London and then I realised that at £1.1m it was the same price as this five bedroom semi-detached villa with its own garden folly in Stroud, Gloucestershire and it felt like no contest. It's on with Inigo and is a Grade II listed building

Today I am going to tell you about my discovery of a brilliant site that allows you to buy and sell used kitchens which not only saves them from landfill but also means, if you are quick, that you can pick up designer kitchens - Plain English, Devol and, er mine (!) for a fraction

Today's post started out as rather more of a note to subscribers rather than something the casual passer-by might find useful. You found me defeated for a post, which I think we can all agree does not happen often. Ever. At all. The decorator/joiner starts next week on the bedrooms. My next book - due

As ever a random selection of rooms which have caught my eye in the corridors of the internet this week. Starting off with this pretty table and chairs in what I think might be the image that first sparked my concept of the importance of a disrupter colour. Arts & Crafts Breakfast Table by christopher

Not just beautiful rooms for you this week but some clever ideas too, including one of the classic - I wish I'd thought of thats... So let's dive straight in with this Swedish kitchen and classic checkerboard floor below. image via historiska hem Some time ago when I was writing about Charlotte Perriand I pointed

Spinning the dial again this week and we go from a nearly £2m artist's studio to a two bedroom flat that is full of colour and character and proves one and for all that size isn't everything if you decorate cleverly. It's in south east London and is on with Inigo for £635,000. It's on

As regular readers will know blue is not a colour I feature very often but this week, for some reason, I found myself drawn to it on several occasions so let's see where it takes us. Looking at what I chose I think it's the opposite of cold and yet, if you did stray into

I've said for a long time that the Georgian vicars got all the best houses and now, it turns out, the Georgian doctors did pretty well too. This terrace, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, is believed to have been his (and it would have been a he) home with the surgery next door. Now it's Grade II

When I can't sleep I decorate. Not literally but in my mind's eye. I start with rooms I own and imagine methodically clearing them out to make way for a new design. Then, should rest still be elusive, I move onto rooms I don't own. I might pick a style - this week it seems

Firstly when I say these are small ideas that is not to downgrade them - they are actually big ideas that either don't involve much work, or might involve simply a tweak to what is already going on and which make a big difference to a room. Big. (Huge, as Julia Roberts would say). First

I know that many (most?) of you are interested in sustainability and trying to live in a more eco-friendly way so today I thought I would share this report on the future of the sustainable home and office which has been put together by Springwise and Aritco (a London-based global innovation intelligence platform for positive

A treat for you this week as we have two houses. It turned out that the two that ended up on this week's short list had a symmetry of price so I thought we could look at both. The first is the former home of the sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink, in Dorset, which has recently

We interrupt our usual Friday Househunter service (first time in 10 years people) because I want to tell you about a new product that I have been working on and which will debut at Decorex this weekend. Vita is a sofa. But in addition to being a gorgeous curvy number she is also as sustainable

Time for the monthly round-up of things from my inbox and we're starting off with brand new company Colour Squatters, a new textile company founded by interior designer (and former journalist) Jill Macnair and textile designer Pablo di Francesco who met while training at the gym and starting chatting and, well, one thing led to

Well this one's got film script written all over it. One of those gorgeous little apartments right in the centre of one of the most expensive cities in the world, where the gorgeous (yet clearly impoverished) young woman lives with no visible means of support. She's probably a student (all those books) but maybe works