interior styling

Trend alert: The Library

First it was the death of the dining room. With our hunger for open plan living, we no longer needed a separate room for entertaining our dinner guests, so we converted our old dining rooms into playrooms, teen hangout dens, even home offices. But there’s a growing new trend out there which I think is fabulous… it’s the return of the Library Room.

Along with the growing popularity of a separate pantry and the ever coveted boot room, it’s another sign that our home interiors are increasingly reflective of a time gone by. As an antidote to the technology-driven world we live in, our homes have become our havens and we crave a more organic, wholesome, environment to live in. Along with the all-connected, technology-abundant open plan living spaces we have created, there’s a growing need to escape from it. And how better than with a good old book!

A dedicated library room or corner can be a place to escape screens and social media, but equally it can be a peaceful spot to work, away from the noise and bustle of the main living areas. And best of all, it’s not a difficult concept to create in your home. All you need is a spare section of wall, an unused corner or, if you’re one of the lucky few, an unused dining room!

Here are some wonderful library rooms to inspire you…

1. Midcentury Cool

US designer Jenny Komenda has created this stunning library in her home in Arizona, using layered rugs for cosy texture, along with midcentury modern furnishings and built-in white bookshelves to keep the room fresh and bright. Another trick seen here is stacking books both ways and interspersing them with ornaments and vases to prevent the shelves from becoming too heavy and overwhelming.

2. Traditional + Cosy

This cosy library makes the most of a dark room, with shelving built into the alcoves and traditional, comfortable furnishings arranged around a vintage rug. I could while away many a Sunday afternoon in here!

Painting the walls, fireplace surround and woodwork in the one shade of inky blue gives it a warming ambience and allows the patterned accessories, rug and shelf displays to stand out. For a similar colour, try Little Greene Royal Navy or Farrow & Ball Stiffkey Blue.

3. Library corner

Even where space is limited, you can create a library corner such as this one, seen in a Swedish home. Keep the display considered and the backdrop light in order to make a statement of your book styling. It can also double up as a home workspace area and would be the perfect library room solution on a hallway or landing corner.

4. Modern Reading Room

This modern home features a library wall built in around a large doorway between two living areas. The central doors can be shut to close the library room off from the adjoining kitchen area and create a cosy ambience for reading and relaxing. I’m also totally coveting a rolling ladder!

5. Thrifty Library

Creating a library room in your home needn’t be an expensive project. The folks at IKEA have it sussed with affordable shelving solutions that are just the ticket for storing and displaying any size of book collection. You can even ‘IKEA hack’ them to resemble bespoke designed shelving, however with a carefully curated display of books as seen below, it can look fab.

6. Industrial Shelving Solution

This room features a library wall designed with industrial style shelving, constructed from reclaimed metal piping and scaffold boards. This look is perfect for a more eclectically themed home, however is definitely one for the more adventurous DIYers amongst you! I love it against the exposed brick wall.

Do you have a library room or corner in your home or would it be a feature you’d consider when renovating or redecorating? I’d love to know!

K xx

Room Makeover: Our master bedroom revamp

Although we’ve been in our current home just over three years, there always seems to be a project to finish off. I wonder whether it will always be like that? (My husband says yes, if married to me…)

Our master bedroom is one such project; having ripped up the old green carpet and rid the room of the 1980s glazed slide robe, the room pretty much stayed stripped back and waiting for its makeover for almost a year. There just always seemed to be another, more pressing, job to save up for. Sound familiar?

This is how the room looked back at the beginning of 2017 before we had our new furniture chosen, walls painted or carpet fitted…

Shortly after the new carpet went down, we ordered a bed frame from MADE. I always loved the design of the wooden Ercol beds, so was delighted to find the Penn bed, which is really similar in style, but comfortably within our budget! We topped it with an IKEA HÖVAG mattress that was previously gifted to me for the purpose of a blog post I wrote some time ago in collaboration with IKEA (which you can read here). We also bought a desk for the corner of the room for me to use as a dressing table; I’ve detailed more about it further below.

It took me a while to choose a paint colour for the room, however after much deliberation, I settled for Farrow & Ball’s Peignoir, a beautifully soothing soft pink with just a hint of grey. Perfect for a calming bedroom scheme. The room pretty much stayed like this for a year, however I just felt it was missing something. It was only when I moved a Canadian art print (that my uncle and aunt in Ontario had given us for our wedding), onto the space above the bed, that I felt inspired to create a colour scheme around it that would add a bit of depth and interest to the room.

I put together a basic mood board to pull my thoughts together and keep me focused:

Taking into account the colours in the painting, I chose another Farrow & Ball colour, Inchyra Blue, for the wall behind the bed, which marries really nicely with the Peignoir. Inchyra Blue is more of a deep teal shade than a dark blue, so it’s really warmed the room up and made it feel like a cosy haven to retire to at the end of the day. I also love how the pale oak bed frame looks against it. This change spurred me on to finish off other aspects of the room, to the point where I can finally show you how it’s progressed from the bland beige ‘boudoir’ it once was.

So, here’s how the room is looking now!

Isn’t the Inchyra Blue just THE most gorgeous colour? It’s so cosy, yet if I’m sitting reading in bed, the room still feels light around me, rather than dark and heavy. I found the bedside rug in IKEA – chosen because it breaks up the grey carpet (a slight regret of mine to go grey with the carpets… on hindsight I think an oatmeal/neutral floor covering is more versatile), and it also ties in the dark teal colour of the wall.

I bought the little desk from La Redoute (the Jimi desk), which I use as a dressing table after years of drying my hair on the floor in front of a mirror! Feels very extravagant now :)

The round mirror is from The Range (similar one here) and the wall-mounted beside lamps are good old IKEA RANARP ones which are great, because you can angle them away if reading in bed whilst your partner is sleeping.

I picked up the bamboo lampshade in B&Q recently, having had a bog standard white drum shade hanging here for a while. I love the dappled light it casts come evening time. B&Q is becoming a great place for finding home accessories that don’t cost the earth and you can fire them in the big trolley with your paint and sandpaper and the husband never notices! Win win!

We more often have plain white bedding on the bed, but I do still love this boho style patterned set I bought from H&M a while back. It’s nice for a change, although I don’t think they stock it any longer. The cushion covers are from H&M too and generally move around my house a lot! The bed blanket adds to the cosy factor and is a beautiful wool one I was gifted some time ago for work I did with local homeware company, Murmur.

I also have plan to make a pair of curtains for in here and am considering using IKEA fabric for budget purposes – this one is a great colour match to the room, so I must get on with it before it goes out of stock. (It’s not a great picture of it online, but if you look at the canvas bag hanging on my peg rail further down, it’s made from the same fabric!)

This is a gorgeous little peg rail I picked up in H&M a while back, although they are quite often sold out… can you tell I absolutely LOVE H&M Home products?! So well designed at such a good price point. The little glass globe plant hanger is from Söstrene Grene… wish I had bought a few of these!

We had IKEA PAX wardrobes fitted at this side of the room where the old slide robes used to be. They are an absolute must-have if you want good storage solutions on a tight budget! We have loved them and I find the central mirrored door handy for when I’m getting ready to go out (when my kids allow me 5 mins to check myself out!!)

Just had to include a pic of this little old lady enjoying the sun!

This is the view out onto the landing. I feel it’s important to consider a colour scheme for your room that flows well with the adjacent spaces in your home. It helps make your home feel calm and connected.

So, that’s how my bedroom is looking! Just the curtains to sort out, then I can tick it off the list… I’m looking forward to showing you my daughter and son’s bedrooms soon, too. Again, they just needed tweaked to finish them off, but it’s great to finally feel as though the home has our stamp on it outside of the main living areas downstairs.

Have you any home projects on the go that you’ve put off for a while?

K x

Why you need a glass cabinet in your home

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE faffing and pottering around the house at the weekend or on a quiet morning, and there’s one key piece of kit that I believe every home needs for the ultimate styling fun… a glass cabinet. Be it Great Great Granny’s vintage Edwardian hand-me-down, a cool Danish teak MCM sideboard or IKEA’s latest affordable display unit, there is a myriad of uses for a glass cabinet. Here are some of the more imaginative ways you can restyle or repurpose yours…

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Sustainable home decor ideas

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the current world of ‘fast fashion’ that we live in and its effect on the environment. Clothes and accessories have become cheaper than ever before, both in terms of quality and price, however serious environmental issues such as water pollution, toxic chemical leakage and textile waste have become the inevitable consequence of the instant fashion fix we’re all after.

And it’s not only in the fashion world. The interiors industry looks to be following suit, with unethical furniture manufactured from illegal timber, disposable homeware items and cheaply produced textiles providing us the opportunity to update our homes at a fraction of the price, and therefore, more frequently, too.

We’re all guilty of it. Updating our sofa with a cheap cushion cover picked up at the supermarket or opting for that replica designer chair to save ourselves a few pounds and make an instant, trendy update to our home. It’s very hard not to be tempted by the sheer amount of home accessories on offer on the High Street, in our supermarkets, even the discount stores are replicating designer looks for pennies. The result is a build up of clutter that ends up in our ever growing refuse heap and most of it not biodegradable, either.

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A mini kitchen gallery wall update with Desenio

I don’t know what it is about September, but every year I find myself updating and rejigging things around the house. Sometimes it’s as simple a job as changing up a cabinet display or rearranging a shelf, but I think the purpose is primarily to give my home a refresh for the new season approaching (that or the fact the sun has decided to hibernate and I’m forced indoors again!).

I was recently adding some lovely new bits and pieces to my glass drinks cabinet in my kitchen, when I realised what was really missing was something interesting on the wall above. Thankfully, the lovely team at Scandinavian poster company, Desenio, offered me the opportunity to select a choice of posters and art prints to style up and display in my home, so I immediately got to work, planning my choice of prints to jazz up this little area of wall space.

The first thing that surprised me about Desenio’s vast website, was not only the wide choice of designs before me, but how neatly and clearly the range of prints was categorised, making it an easy job to find and order up the styles and sizes I wanted. The only problem I had was narrowing down my final choice, as there are so many amazing designs to navigate!

I decided that I wanted a quirky, relaxed, feel to my mini wall display, so I opted for a mix of typography prints and art posters with a homely, yet modern vibe, with a vintage botanical theme running through to connect the pieces. This is probably the main thing to consider when planning a gallery display in your home – make sure there is an element, no matter how subtle, that visually links the various pictures. It could be that they are all monochrome images, but in different frames for a more relaxed feel, or a collection of postcards, paintings and posters in similarly styled frames with a central colour or design style to unite them.

Another thing I really liked about the Desenio site, was that once I’d chosen each print, Desenio offered me a choice of frames to choose from, so there was no danger of me selecting the wrong frame size. It made the whole process such a pleasurable, stress-free experience, and it was easy to change them around in my shopping basket later, if wanted.

I love the look of vintage style posters and you can find some great examples on Desenio at a fraction of the price of more ‘authentic’ versions. I chose the ‘Herbs Green’ and ‘Cocktails’ posters for their on-trend, vintage vibe. They’re perfect for the kitchen.

To mix it up a little, I opted for a couple of smaller, more contemporary, A5-sized typography posters (the ‘Ampersand’ and the ‘Dancing’ prints), as well as the ever-popular ‘Palmaceae’ art print, seen below, for a little pop of botanical greenery to soften the overall look.

I’m really pleased with how I’ve managed to create an instant update to this wall so easily. The great thing is, Desenio are offering you all a discount on their website, for you to plan your own gallery wall! Using the code “dekkobird” gives 25% off posters* on the Desenio site between September 11th and 13th 2018 (*except for frames and handpicked/collaboration posters).

So, what are you waiting for?

Happy shopping!

K x

Simple ways to uplift a decor scheme

It’s at this time of year, when the days are long and the light is bright, that we have the energy and motivation to ‘get things done’. Whether it’s getting out into the garden to do a tidy up or putting aside a weekend to repaint the downstairs loo, you can rest assured that homes and gardens across the country are being deep cleaned, refreshed and revived.

Redecorating a room in the home can be a costly affair, especially when we waste money trying (and failing) to get it right. Perhaps the overall effect is lacking in something, but you don’t know what? Often, despite having spent hours trawling through images on Pinterest to try to nail a certain look, you can be left feeling confused and unsure in which direction a decor scheme is going, so I thought I’d give you a few straightforward ideas on how you can successfully complete a decor scheme or add a little personality to it.

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Take 5… Beautiful All White Interiors

It seems that our interiors are getting darker and darker, with more of us taking the plunge and painting our home interiors in dark, inky hues of indigo and blue-grey, be it our living room walls, kitchen units or in the bedroom. It’s a look that has certainly grown on me, however when recently thinking about our own bedroom decor, I’ve realised that no matter how much I love the concept of a decadently dark and elegant boudoir, I simply can’t bring myself to paint our lovely, light, south-facing bedroom in anything other than WHITE!

It won’t be any old Brilliant White, you understand… I’m pondering and pontificating over paint charts full of grey whites, blue whites, green whites, off whites and almost whites. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that this may actually be the hardest colour of all to pick for a room scheme!

Anyway, it got me thinking that I haven’t posted a ‘Take 5’ article on here for a while, so in an effort to help me settle on a shade of white, here are five all white rooms for you which are so lust-worthy, they’ll make you wonder why EL James didn’t name her book Fifty Shades of White Rooms…

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Take 5… Ways to Style Sheepskin Throws All Year

Another Take 5 post for you today, folks, and this week it’s all about the über-trendy sheepskin throw and how you can make it work hard in your home all year round. Many people consider sheepskin to be a strictly winter-only luxury, however it is an extremely versatile piece of home decor kit and more affordable than ever with plenty of faux options to choose from out there.

Here are some of my favourite ways to work sheepskin in the home and some tips on where to buy those key items…

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Take 5… Plant-Perfect Interiors

In a bid to blog a little more frequently for all you lovely readers, I’m going to intersperse longer content-heavy posts with some briefer, snapshot-style inspirational posts looking at key areas in the home that have particular design looks or decor tricks that have worked that you may wish to recreate. Today I’ve gathered five inspiring interior shots where indoor plants just make it all work. After all, we’re being blessed with some fine May weather at the moment and spending lots more time in our gardens, but why not bring a little lush greenery into the home, too, for those days when it all clouds over but we still need some sunshine inside our four walls.

I’ve also added some notes on how to recreate any of the looks for yourself… so, enjoy browsing!

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Win at Sleeping with Ikea: Reaping the Benefits of Better Sleep

If you’ve been following the blog lately, you’ll know that over the past few weeks we’ve had the amazing opportunity of working with IKEA on their ‘Win at Sleeping’ campaign, which runs until the end of March.

The campaign is aimed at improving the nation’s quality of sleep by encouraging us all to make a few small changes to how we prepare for sleep. This can be anything from creating a calm, cosy and restful bedtime environment to adjusting our personal sleeping habits to ensure a full and undisturbed night’s slumber.

I met with IKEA back in February to discuss my own family’s sleep issues and they were able to recommend some strategies and products for us to try, with a view to helping us improve on several sleep-related areas. If you’d like to see the products we chose to try out, you can read up about it here!

Now that we’ve been using the products for a month, I wanted to update you on how we’ve got on, as well as take a quick look at some other IKEA products you might want to consider trying out yourself.

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