We love a slow mooch around a museum shop, but usually only when we have been to a particular exhibition.
This shouldn’t be the case and we should treat them as actual shops, considering the majority of our museums and galleries are free. Also take advantage of the online museum shops, especially if your looking for books.
A good design book can not only give informative text and pictures, but they usually always look nice – something you want to have out on display.
We had a look at the Design Museum website and found a great selection of books for interiors lovers. Use the menu to navigate the particular topic like Product Design or Architecture and find some inspiring coffee table books to dip into at any time.
Another great museum shop for books is the Barbican with fascinating reads including titles exploring concrete architecture and suburbia life.
So next time you are looking for a gift or an inspiring read for yourself, head to a museum shop, you won’t be disappointed.
Size isn’t everything. The compact curated collection of wares in the Luke Arthur Wells online shop is all you need for a little inspiration for your home and treats to buy, to introduce the latest trends into your home.
Interior stylist and designer, Luke, offers this capsule collection of homeware from an online store with regular product updates and trend aware new items.
The store stocks great simple style. Choose from the selection of small homewares ticking the boxes of concrete, geometric, metallic, smoked glass and monochrome trends, to name a few.
We have seen stripes before in interiors with the monochrome and nautical trends. This time around we take a more subtle approach to this look with narrow stripes on ceramics, texture in wallpapers and structured furniture.
When accessorising a room pick out simple pieces with a minimal feel – block coloured vases and pin stripe ceramics / varying stripes on soft furnishings such as cushions and rugs. The popular colour choice will always be black and white but if you want to introduce other colours keep it relatively neutral with beiges and greys, and even bring metalic tones of gold and bronze.
Bringing stripes onto a wall can be a brave decision, but if you limit it to one wall and use just two colours of similar tone you can create a real focal point, but it doesn’t need to dominate the room. Pale colours like moss green and powder pink work great. If you fancy some wallpaper consider a textured option – a really contemporary way to get stripes into a room [ take a look at grahambrown.com ].
Another idea of how to bring this trend into your home is to use two or three narrow stripes in a hallway or running up stairs. This brings interest to areas which otherwise might be quite plain. Stick to one colour and run them the full length of a wall or stairscase.
When it comes to furniture don’t think you need to go out and and buy heavily striped units or chairs. One statement armchair can really help bring this trend into a living room, although keep the rest of the furniture neutral. Alternatively find pieces that give the illusion of stripes. For example the Hay dining chair [ pic 5 ] with metal frame or a storage unit like the made.com chest of drawers [ pic 9 ] using panels across the front creating a subtle striped pattern.
Sometimes choosing a wallpaper or wall covering can be difficult, finding the right design that fits with the room. If you have a small room or wall, you don’t really need to be buying a whole roll either.
Here we show you a couple of ideas of how to bring pattern onto a wall with minimal cost.
Why not try stenciling, using nothing more than some card, scissors and marker pens. Pick a simple design that will work as a repeat pattern, try not to make it too intricate. Abeautifulmess.com have recently done a gold cactus design and we think it looks great. This look works best on a white wall, but go bold with the colours you want to add.
Another idea we have seen, which could look really good in a monochrome room is using washi tape. Instead of creating a stencil use the washi tape to create the design – crosses, stripes or squares perhaps. You can pick up rolls of tape everywhere now, but to keep cost down head to ebay. We found designrulz.com for some brilliant ideas.
The main thing to remember when doing a wall like these is to roughly mark out the first line, with distance between each design starting in the middle of the wall and work out either side. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly straight, it all ads to the look and charm of doing it yourself.
Quince Living is a veritable feast of living and lifestyle shopping, with a huge range of designers and brands in their many departments.
‘…online family run store for Scandinavian home wares and UK made designs along with products from well-loved home wares brands such as Stelton, Nkuku, Orla Kiely and House of Rym.’
With so many great pieces for every room, plus decorations, stationery, kids decor, furniture – it’s endless. The price range varies from affordable to save-up-for and there’s also lovely pieces in their sale section.
Miss Print at John Lewis / bringing the outdoors in
Not that we don’t appreciate a painted wall and the ease of changing colour, but recently wallpaper has just grown in choice with incredible options of style and look for any room.
Technology has helped us by bringing in paste-the-wall paper instead of paste-the-paper, which allows us all to have a go at hanging wallpaper with much more ease.
To pin point a favourite would be hard but we’ve rounded up groups of our favourite designs and found some of the best stores to head to.
Make a statement with a bold design. For a wow factor, especially effective with nature and floral designs, cover all walls and then push the look further with more strong patterns in the soft furnishings. This look can be softened, instead, by using minimal accessories, clean line furniture and lots of white.
Bold patterns can also be effective on a solo wall as a feature wall and then when styling the room pick one or two colours to follow through in the choice of soft furnishings.
Baltic Shop / Graham & Browne
Fun and colourful designs are great for a children’s bedroom and can also be both educative, when the designs involve words, pictures and numbers, and interactive, with designs that involve stories, colouring in and games. Visit Graham & Browne and Baltic Shop for interactive options.
For a grown up, strong look, it is currently a key trend to go dark in interiors and contrary to belief it actually brightens a room. Contrast with white ceilings, light floors and sits well with dark woods and accessories in monochrome and metallics.
A constant favourite is monochrome. Easy to style and regularly update with black and white accessories as well as new on trend colours like copper and also 80s brights, monochrome allows flexibility and never fails to look fresh and stylish. Monochrome sits well with walnut, white or wire furniture.
If you decide to go for a wall covering we’ve discovered the excellent range of Betapet who not only have a great selection of bold, on-trend patterned and exciting designs but also, quite brilliantly, their range is self adhesive ensuring decorating is even easier! Head to their Etsy shop and choose from stripes, geometric and nature-inspired designs.
Betapet / self adhesive wallpaper / find on Etsy
Wallpaper is definitely a modern look and needs to be considered a great way to bring pattern and strong design to interior design. And it isn’t to be discounted, thinking its a hassle to change as realistically it’s just a strip and re-paper if desired. Patterned designs can be great at covering imperfect walls (unlike unforgiving paint) and with new methods of hanging there’s very little mess and fuss!
Dulux have sought out another exciting trend. Your interiors can become clean and bright with the lines and colours of the Off-The-Grid trend.
It brings together the control of chaos with the framework of lines, wire grid work and monochrome clarity, with a playful ‘off the grid’ freedom using splashes of colour with a fun bright tonal palette. Essentially this trend brings together the on-trend colours of coral, teal, copper and yellow with the crisp linear simplicity of the monochrome trend.
Search for grid pattern wall papers ( try Ferm Living ), big geometric patterns on soft furnishings from brands including Next, Zazzle and John Lewis, and colourful bold items of furniture that will sit against a monochrome backdrop. Head to Made for a huge selection of bright stand alone pieces of furniture at great prices.
‘We need boundaries in which to live, even if we seek to rebel against them, freedom is only understandable within the context of a framework’ Dulux
Learn the inside outs of interior decoration and styling with this 5 day course running at University of the Arts, London –
stimulating introduction to the decoration and styling process, you will develop your skills and references around a domestic project, devised for a fictional client. This course will Introduce you to the history of interior decoration as you become familiar with the vocabulary of design, period, styles, colour, materials and finishes… 5 day course / £699 / available in April, July and August
Nook is just charming, minimal and full of irresistible homewares. There are simple well made items, lots of classic kitchenalia and many beautiful, useful pieces for the home.
The store based in Stoke Newington, London, and also online, opened in 2012 by three friends. It’s a beautifully curated selection of pieces for each room in the house plus lovely extras like the ‘chocolate makers‘ department and they even offer a wedding list service.
Products are from the UK and beyond, with focus on strong design and being ‘built to last’. The ranges include pieces from designers and makers including James Brown, Baggu, Ferm Living and Hay.
Miss Print is a ecological, UK based creative brand who support UK manufacturing industry and their local community.
Head to John Lewis and explore the wonderful range of homeware, fabrics and wallpaper – contemporary with definite hints of inspiration from both Scandivian and midcentury designs.
‘MissPrint aims to produce beautifully designed, contemporary wall-coverings, fabrics and interior accessories, all originating from hand drawn illustrations. We are a growing family business, and we work from our new countryside studio, bordering East London.’
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