IDEAS BY ROOMS

There is a kind of home that stops you in the doorway. Terracotta walls, a deep sofa you can sink into, patterns that do not match and somehow do. It feels warm, collected, and itself — like the person who lives there chose every single thing on purpose. That is the heart of afrohemian decor:…

Some rooms feel finished the moment you walk in, and most of the time the reason is colour, not money. A pale yellow bedroom with a wooden bed, a living room where terracotta meets sage green, a pink bedroom that dares to add red: these are the combinations that make a rented flat or a…

You can buy the sofa, hang the art, fluff the cushions — and still walk into a room that feels unfinished. I have stood in that room, convinced the answer was new furniture. It almost never is. The gap is usually a detail nobody thinks to decorate: the ceiling over your head, the mirror leaning…

I used to think summer decorating meant buying things: new cushions, new curtains, a new tablecloth, a whole new look for three months. Then one June I did the opposite. I took things away instead. The heavy duvet went into a bag, the dark throw came off the bed, the kitchen counters were cleared back…

Wallpaper is the fastest way to make a room feel finished, and the slowest to undo, which is why most people stare at the samples for months and buy nothing. A dining room in burgundy florals, a living room in soft linen texture, a bookcase lined with bold paper: these are the wallpaper ideas that…

Valentine’s Day has a way of making a home feel either loved or left out. The shops fill with pink and red in January, the ideas online look like they need a whole new living room, and it is easy to decide to do nothing at all. I have tried both, doing nothing and going…

There is a particular kind of tired that only a grey week in a first home can bring, and a five-dollar bunch of tulips from the grocery store fixes more of it than it should. You need one bunch, one vase you already own, and ten minutes. I started buying a bunch every Friday in…

Picking a neutral paint color should be the easy part of decorating, and somehow it is the part that keeps people stuck for months. I have stood in a paint aisle holding six swatches that all looked like the same warm white. The right neutral works with the light you actually have, not the light…

Some bedrooms feel romantic the moment you walk in, and it is almost never the expensive furniture doing it. It is the soft light at the end of the day, the bedding you actually want to climb into, a vase of flowers that cost less than a takeaway coffee. I have spent years making rented…

The mantel is the first thing you see when you walk into the living room, and at Easter it is the easiest place in the whole house to make spring feel real. A garland across the front edge, a pair of bunnies, a vase of tulips, and suddenly the room smells faintly of fresh flowers…