Kate Lovejoy Interiors

Category: Interior Design

  • How Using Blocks of Colour can Transform a Room

    How Using Blocks of Colour can Transform a Room

    Style stories

    How Using Blocks of Colour can Transform a Room

    It might remind you of a Mondrian abstract painting or the opening title graphics of a 1980s TV game show, but colour-blocking is a retro design technique that is enjoying a resurgence in interior design today. Pairing two or more solid, often bold, bright colours with geometric shapes and sometimes black and white stripes has been around in art and fashion for a century, but only really in interiors since the 80s when it burst out of the Milan scene. Despite the obvious links to that primary-coloured decade, when done well, colour-blocking can make a stylish, affordable impact in the home.

    It’s not an interior design trend for everyone, but if you’ve ever confidently gone out wearing a neon pink skirt, a turquoise top and yellow shoes, then you’ve got what it takes to use blocks of colour to transform any room in your house. Before you dismiss the idea because you don’t want your living room to look like a primary school classroom, keep reading, because making a bold statement can simultaneously be subtle. Anything can be your canvas for block colour – you don’t have to divide your walls into quarters and layer on the poster paints. Window recesses, drawer fronts, doors, and even floors, can all be used to stunning effect with block colours.

    Colour blocking is the art of combining two or more colours in one area. Back in the day, these were more often primary colours, but today there are no real rules, in fact, sometimes the more surprising combinations are the most effective, as long as you stick to a limited palette. Think pink cushions on a red sofa, or an orange handle on a dark green door. It’s subversively stylish, often going against other design principles, yet instantly noticeable. It can enliven a bland space, negate the need for expensive wall art, and highlight the features in your home in a clever way. Here are some areas you can consider:

    Colour Blocking – Bedrooms

    Steer clear of the bold colours and contrast muted shades instead for a more soothing overall feel. You can use blocks of colour with pastels or by introducing a thin stripe as your contrast, and it will still have an impact.

    Dressing room in our Old School House project (click here to find out more)

    Colour Blocking – Kitchens

    There’s no rule that says that all kitchen units have to be the same colour. Consider a run of doors in your chosen palette, tied to accessories elsewhere in the same colour. Or go two-tone with upper and lower cupboard doors. You can even alternate drawer fronts for a more restrained look.

    We love @Oxfordone’s colourful Instagram feed!
    More muted colour blocking in Geordie Jen’s Abode kitchen

    Colour Blocking – Architectural Features

    Window frames painted to contrast with the wall colour are a great opportunity to try out colour-blocking, as are wall recesses. There’s no limit to where you can dip your toe into the technique, as long as you take a holistic view to maintain harmony. Even random blocks of a herringbone floor work well. Consider the effect of light switches and plug sockets in a contrasting colour to your wall as a rebellious taster if you don’t feel you can go all the way!

    Gorgeous muted green window frames in one of our projects in Dorchester, with pink dining chairs adding a burst of colour.
    Add pops of colour in bedrooms with headboards, cushions and beautiful light fittings.

    Colour Blocking – Furniture

    As with the kitchen cupboards, blocking can work on other pieces of furniture too. Many period wooden doors have four panels that are crying out to be painted in different colours. Flashes of colour in unexpected places are also fantastic – the inside of a wardrobe clashing with the carcass, for example.

    Colourful furniture and alcove by @Oxfordone

    If you want to know more about how to use blocks of colour in your home or have seen any examples that you love, let me know! And check out my Interior Design services here.

    Contact Me!
  • Working With Bold Colours and Patterns

    Working With Bold Colours and Patterns

    Style stories

    Working With Bold Colours and Patterns

    Have a scroll through a property website and compare a dozen living rooms – notice how those with colour, patterns and accessories look more comfortable, stylish and inviting, than the magnolia empty ones? Then look at the real standout ones – I bet they feature some vibrant colour somewhere, because bold colours are very definitely on trend. (Check out our blog post earlier in the year on interior design trends for 2020). That said, it would be a crazily daunting leap for anyone to immediately start painting their white bedroom walls blue or their kitchen bright green, so how do you choose when it comes to bold colours and where should you begin?

    The Basics

    As always, you’ve got to take a step back and look at the canvas you’ve got to work on – the size of the room is an obvious starting point. In a small space, four block colour walls will be overpowering, so an accent wall will be your style statement.

    Larger rooms can handle complete colour, but again, too many contrasts elsewhere in the space will be visually overwhelming. Then consider where you want to make your colour statement – bold colours are often used successfully in rooms where you want to make an impression, so a living room or an entrance hallway are popular, and any kitchen diner that entertains or is the hub of the house will also work. It’s less common in bedrooms where you might prefer a more calming environment.

    The wall in this kitchen diner makes a real statement but we kept the surrounding walls neutral so that it isn’t too overpowering – see our Abel Gardens project.

    The Palette

    Bold colours always need something to play off, which is where your colour wheel from your old school art class comes in handy! You need to consider complementary hues, as well as the same harmonious tonal family. You can see plenty of examples in fashion, art and even nature. Whether you’re a fuchsia and olive-green person or a navy and orange fan, don’t dive in straight away, plan carefully and don’t forget your neutral shades.

    It’s always a good idea to lay out your swatches together to see how your design will work.

    The eye needs some respite in a bold colour room, so use your most vivid colour as an accent colour only. Designers often use a 60/30/10 rule for dominant/secondary/accent colours and it’s sage (a good neutral!) advice to achieve the right balance. If you’re nervous about choosing your colour scheme, then don’t forget to test things out – a step up from a paint tester pot is to spray paint an old piece (a wooden chair, say) in your bold colour and see how you feel. Another great way of deciding which colours work together is by picking them from an existing pattern that you like and can incorporate, which leads us nicely onto:

    The Patterns

    Pattern is the ultimate unifying device for your colours and can single-handedly bring a design together in one well-chosen accessory. When done well, you might not even notice that an intricately patterned cushion on a neutral sofa is cohesively marrying both the wall colour, a rug, and your vibrant chosen accent colour. While I’m not suggesting you base the room’s entire scheme around a cushion pattern, they are a great inspiration if you’re stuck. Textiles are the best place to incorporate pattern, and they often throw texture into the mix too, which is great. As for the pattern design itself, a lot will be personal choice, but botanical patterns work well with greens and earth tones, for example, and graphical designs suit more architectural black and white and greys.

    The botanical print on this much loved armchair helped inspire the design for the rest of the room in our Littleton Street project.
    This is the whole living room – notice the accent colours from the armchair pattern picked up in the soft furnishings.

    So, don’t be afraid of bold colour – just remember that it needs its friends to make it thrive. And if you’re really stuck, call your friendly interior designer, because we love it!

    Contact Me!
  • Why is Putting Personality into your Home so Important?

    Why is Putting Personality into your Home so Important?

    Style stories

    Why is Putting Personality into your Home so Important?

    In a nutshell, to answer the question right away, without personality a house will never be a home. It can be a tastefully decorated, beautifully equipped house, but without some added personality bringing it to life, it will never feel like a real home. Consider the replica living rooms and bedrooms you wander through on a trip round Ikea: ubiquitous art on the walls, plastic fruit in a bowl, all new and shiny, but zero personality. In the same way, there’s nothing worse than entering a home and having no sense of the people who live there.

    The best homes are full of personality, where the interiors reflect their owner. They are always more welcoming, authentic and vibrant than any blank, soulless canvas. That’s not to say the understated minimalist look doesn’t work, of course, as long as it’s also a true expression of the inhabitants’ lives, loves and personalities. Putting personality into your home is a principle that applies no matter where you live or what you live in. It doesn’t require the most sought-after postcode or bespoke furniture from the latest interior design magazine. It’s about showing an emotional link to your space through design decisions that come from the heart. And it’s why, as an interior designer, collaboration with a client is so crucial. I could design the interior of a house from top to bottom with no input from the owner, but my choices alone would never showcase their personality in the way that a single framed photo of their own would.

    So, how do you go about it? Where do you begin? How do you know what style or design trends accurately represent you or suit your persona? These are tough questions – so much so that you can actually hire interior designers who will use online personality questionnaires and artificial intelligence to pigeonhole you to a décor type! You’re an “organised, efficient perfectionist”? Great, go with the stripped-back minimalist look I mentioned above! While there are elements of truth in these algorithms – certain types of people do like shabby chic when others prefer Scandi – there’s often no need to physically pose these questions. Personality shines through in every decision or choice we make when it comes to interior design. The patterns we gravitate towards or the colours we prefer “fit” us; they are subconscious affirmations of our personality every time we show a preference.

    My advice is not to take a strict cookie-cutter approach, but to design and decorate using these personal choices, within the theories of interior design. If they happen to be in line with trends or styles, that’s great and can make complementing the look easier, but if not, it doesn’t matter. Trends come and go and are expensive to follow. As I’ve discussed before, your home needs to be a sanctuary where you can relax and be yourself. This means we need personal items or purchases that make the owner happy and suit their lifestyle. No strict rules also gives you the licence to have fun with your space – you can mix and match without pressure; repurpose much-loved pieces that help tell the owner’s story and reflect their personality; and go as crazy (or be as subdued) as you like!

    The images above are taken from some of our favourite projects where we have helped clients put their personality into their home, from a ‘swanky’ bar to bespoke rugs and artwork that has inspired a theme.

    If you need help putting your personality into your home while incorporating your treasured items do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. We offer advice by the hour, interior space planning, a full design service as well as kitchen design, bespoke rug design and sofa & chair selection.

    Contact Me!
  • How to Make Your Bedroom a Sanctuary

    How to Make Your Bedroom a Sanctuary

    Style stories

    How to Make Your Bedroom a Sanctuary

    With a renewed interest in our own physical and mental well being these days, 8 hours sleep has become the new 10,000 steps a day, with our smartwatches tracking how well we do and reminding us of the importance of a good night’s sleep. On top of these 3,000 hours a year we (should) spend sleeping, our bedrooms are also a place we can relax and de-stress, after a long day. With that in mind, here are some design tips to turn your bedroom into a sanctuary where you will hopefully want to spend more than just 8 hours.

    Bedroom Interior Design – Colour

    Starting with the basics, to some extent this may depend on the décor throughout the rest of your house, but ideally in a bedroom you should aim for colours that calm you. Some people prefer the pure, serene vibe of whites and off-whites, while others need a darker, enveloping atmosphere to feel comfortable enough to sleep. It’s important to think about what works for you and makes you feel your calmest. Blues and greens are said to lower the heart rate, which if true for you, would be ideal sleep preparation.

    Calming colours in this master bedroom in our Spinfield project create a perfect bedroom sanctuary

    Bedroom Interior Design – Textures

    Incorporating different textures can add warmth, visual stimulus, and a touch of luxury. If you’re lucky enough to be able to incorporate any exposed brick or wooden beams, that’s great, but if not, consider some textured wallpaper on one or two walls, rather than four cold walls of paint. Then think about a mixture of fabrics, beyond your choice of bed linen. Rugs, throws, fabric lampshades or a linen window blind will all add a warm, luxe feel to a room where we want to indulge our senses.

    Add texture and layering when designing a bedroom – this is the master bedroom in our Glade Road project

    Bedroom Interior Design – Lighting

    When it’s dark, our circadian rhythms kick in and our bodies produce melatonin, telling us we need to sleep. It can be a tougher transition to get to sleep if we switch straight from a single, bright overhead light to lights out. Using multiple low-level light sources, such as bedside lamps with shades to diffuse the light, or a corner floor lamp, will help prepare us for sleep. Interior designers love symmetry and it’s also said to subconsciously soothe us, so we love a bedroom where we can place matching bedside tables and lamps. If you’re short on space or the tables are too small, you could equally install low-hanging pendants from the ceiling to the bedside, providing you avoid a bare bulb.

    Simple bedside lighting in the Littleton Street project

    Nature

    Talking of symmetry, earlier in the year I blogged about the current trend for nature in our homes, and the bedroom is a great place for bringing the outside in. Plants purify the air of course, but even imagery of nature or textiles with biophilic designs can have the same calming effect as nature itself. So, whether you’re green-fingered enough to go for full-on hanging or trailing plants from shelves; only brave enough for a cactus you can’t kill; or want to play it safe with wavy, natural patterns on a rug, try to incorporate some element of nature into your bedroom design.

    Bedroom Interior Design – Your ‘stuff’

    Tidying your bedroom (and possibly other rooms too!) is essential for creating a calming atmosphere as well as generating space and light. It’s time to decide what you actually need in that room, for example, is the armchair in the corner really used as a relaxing reading area or do you have three months of clothes piled on top of it? While it’s important for our eyes to wander across things we love, let’s make them carefully chosen pieces, such as art on the walls or beautiful objects, rather than shelves groaning with odd, mismatched items. You’ll be surprised how much more relaxing a pared-back, minimal bedroom can be!

    Declutter and create a space for everything in your bedroom sanctuary – this is the main bedroom in our Cranbook project

    Lastly, the star of the show

    All of these ideas won’t have their intended impact on your bedroom if you don’t like your actual bed. While I don’t advise you spend your entire (interior design!) budget on a new one, there are a few things you can do to improve what you have. Going for the best mattress you can afford is a priority, followed by some serious hotel-quality bed linen. If you don’t want to get a new mattress, then try a mattress topper for a new experience and to breathe new life into your current one (I did this recently and it has made such a difference!). Accessorise with a faux fur throw or some luxurious cushions. If you are intending to buy a new bed, then get one as large as the space allows, placing the headboard against a solid wall, with your eye on the symmetry possibilities mentioned above. Space under the bed will visually makes the room feel bigger, but if you need to opt for a divan in the interests of decluttering, then do it. If your room size allows, a bench at the foot of the bed will help anchor its position in the room and adds an additional, hotel-style luxury touch.

     The average person gets 6.4 hours sleep a night – let’s hope these tips get you nearer to the full 8!

    If you would like help to create your very own sanctuary get in touch today to book an initial consultation, I’d love to hear from you!

    Contact Me!
  • Why Tiles are Trending in Interior Design

    Why Tiles are Trending in Interior Design

    Style stories

    Why Tiles are Trending in Interior Design

    Tiles have been taken for granted for too long. We’ve had them on our bathroom and kitchen walls and across our hall floors for decades but until recently, there has never been enormous variation. The iconic metro tile for example, has been around for over 100 years. While they do now come in multiple colours and you can lay them in interesting ways as seen below, they haven’t ever evolved and their popularity comes and goes with various interior design cycles.

    Metro Tiles

    Mandarin Stone Oska jungle green matt porcelain tiles
    Structural Skins Artiste pink handmade tiles
    Best Tile Artisan metro tiles

    Tiles and Foot Selfies!

    But last year, something changed for tiles. Pinterest saw a 1,276% increase in searches for “painted floor tiles” and suggested there was a global trend afoot. At the same time, Instagram was flooded with foot selfies on tiled floors, with blue and hexagonal ranked as the most ‘liked’ colour and shape on the social channel. Tiles were suddenly everywhere: hand-painted, shaped, bold, textured. So, what happened? And what are this year’s trends in tiles?

    Image from ‘I Have This Thing With Floors’ Instagram feed (click on the image to follow them)

    Tile Technology

    Finally, affordable tile technology means that tiles no longer have to have a straight edge or a conventional finish. This has meant that tiles have become a genuine alternative to marble, with realistic, intricate vein detailing; or wood, with distressed or weathered finished tiles laid out in plank formations. It’s also meant that tiles can jump onto almost every interior design trend with their affordability bringing serious impact for your money.

    Structural Skins Majestic marble tiles

    Structural Skins Majestic marble tiles
    Mandarin Stone Jakob ash parquet porcelain tiles
    Mandarin Stone Colour block porcelain tiles

    These stunning Malmo Willow Leaf tiles from Fired Earth are made using clever production techniques. While they have the appearance of marble, they are made from recycled glass and then coloured using a state-of-the-art inkjet printing process.

    Malmo Willow Leaf tiles from Fired Earth

    Tiles don’t need to be straight

    When I looked at the interior design trends for 2020 in a blog in January, I discussed Art Deco and the return of curves everywhere. Tile trends are no exception, with scalloped fish scales, circles and teardrop shapes selling fast. Topps Tiles announced their 2020 tile of the year as Syren in Midnight Blue. Syren’s dramatic sea colour and shape are bang on trend not just in terms of its Art Deco roots but also its nod to nature as an inspiration, another trend I highlighted. The scalloped shape can be laid upright, facing down or even sideways like fishtails. While they can be cut to finish to a straight edge, they can also be left open for a more visually arresting finish. In dark, glossy finishes like this, a standout contrasting grout makes the scalloped pattern pop even more.

    Some design trends and no doubt future ones, will rely on or be focused around the tile detail. Think of the vogue for the Moroccan, North African vibe and how lost it would be without their hand-finished artisan tiles. Or where the glam, opulent bathroom trend would be with only white square tiles to play with. With tile tech meaning organic designs and textures are easy to produce and able to react to colour trends in design, tiles will never be an afterthought again. We certainly can’t wait to see where they go next.

    I hope you have enjoyed our look at how tiles are used in interior design today. If you would like to incorporate some of these tile designs into your interiors please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.

    Contact Me!