search for: how to get the lighting right

It's been a while since we had a shopping post and given that my house is full of dust and I don't really need any new furniture (plus the design decision fatigue is real) I thought a little virtual wander round the corridors of the internet to see what's about might be just the thing.

The main bedroom is done. We have two complete bedrooms (see the first one here) and brush stroke by brush stroke the grey is being eradicated. For once again this room was a sea of grey when we moved in with a pale grey carpet and walls, broken shutters on the windows that blocked the

A trawl through my own camera roll this week as there are thousands of pictures on it that I have clearly taken because I loved what I was seeing and yet there they languish, for the most part unseen again until a phone reminder "on this day" pops up and I am reminded once again

Last week I took a trip out of London to visit the HQ of Corston Architectural to give a talk on the importance of details and I thought I would share some of that detail (as it were) with you here as I realised, when writing my speech, that the scheme for this house was

A treat for you this week as we take a peek around the house of the interior designer Anouska Hempel, known all over the world for her hotels, gardens and homes. She is often credited with the invention of the boutique hotel - an informal style of hotel intended to be as relaxed and comfortable

Well as it turned out it wasn't a bad week to have Covid as it was a long weekend with lots of telly and no-one was reading blogs anyway. But we're back now and normal service is resumed. Thank you all for your kind wishes over the last ten days. In the end, for me

Last week at Clerkenwell Design Week (back in real life for the first time in two years) I was delighted to chair a panel discussion on designing sustainably for the home. And yes it was just before I succumbed to the dreaded C (I kept a distance from most people and none of the panel

Small space living this week and it's a new build flat in north west London by design-led developers Artform and design studio Scenesmith. At at time when many of us live in small spaces - and those of us in big houses are bound to have small rooms, this collaboration shows you that a modern

I don’t know if m/any of you know but I have been writing a column in Red Magazine for nearly two years now. I began in the depths of lockdown in May 2020 and am delighted to still be there. It’s one of my favourite magazines and one I have bought since it first launched

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

For all last week's talk of the death of pink and the birth of yellow, we all know that in real life things take a little longer to actually come through from forecasts into our homes. So if like me, you are talking about yellow, but haven't actually taken the plunge yet, this post is

Life isn’t always about big ideas and sometimes it’s the smallest ones that have the greatest impact. Have you ever bought a new top and found that it goes with so many things in your wardrobe that you feel you have about ten new outfits? From there it’s a short step to adding a pair

We started the week with Ukrainian interior designers before moving to their products and, at first, it seemed right to finish the week with the traditional househunter from the historic city of Kyiv. I looked through dozens of places before settling on this one - modern, soviet-built, town, coast and country.  But then it didn't

Make no mistake this is a fabulous house. But it is also one that has a lot of challenges which the owners have made work so that you hardly notice the issues and that, surely, is the essence of good decoration? You are always asking me about low ceilings and sloping ceilings and this Grade

To Sweden this week and a three bedroom apartment built in 1953 with a "large, light and sunny balcony" in Gothenburg, a city (according to Wiki) that is known for its Dutch style canals and leafy avenues. Certainly my half-Swedish friend is always telling me we should visit and, were it not for the pandemic