I'm on my seventh interiors project: here's what I do when I have no idea where to start...
I’m currently knee-deep in fabric samples, doing one of my favourite activities of all time: working out decorating schemes for a new interiors project.
I’m loath to use the word “project” because it makes me sound as though I’m pretending to be an interior designer, which I absolutely am not in any way, shape or form, but I’m not sure how else to differentiate between episodes in my seemingly continuous stream of house renovations and room refits. In the past ten years I’ve done three whole-house renos, two mega-extensions and turned a garden shed into an all-singing, all-dancing ranch-style work cabin.
What else should I call these undertakings? Should I be cute and label them adventures? Or, worse, journeys? “Projects” lends the whole thing an air of professionalism, I think - makes my relentless succession of property transformations sound more legitimate. Organised. Which it is, this time, thank you very much: it is very organised. Because I’m not doing this interior for myself: it’s for my client, who has a small holiday cottage business focusing on very high-end, beautiful places to stay in Dorset…
YES THE CLIENT IS ME!
Well done if you put two and two together. Some of you are so astute. No flies on you. It’s me, the holiday cottage business owner. I already let out The Dorset Nook, which is a gorgeous cottage on the Jurassic Coast, and in a couple of months I will be adding The Dorset Nest to the mix. A beautiful fairytale thatched cottage in a tiny village in the depths of rural West Dorset. I just need the interiors woman (me) to get her act together with an interiors and furnishing scheme that comes in on budget, which has been set by the owner (also me), so that the builder, decorator and project manager (Rich, conveniently married to me) can get started.
The problem is that I find the whole process far too enjoyable. Searching for property, weighing up the suitability of it, working out how I’d turn it into something delightful, it’s virtually irresistible to me. I would rather look at houses and plan out their interiors more than almost anything else in the world. I’ve been preoccupied by the whole thing since I was small: obsessed with dolls houses and their furnishings and wallpapers and tiny accessories and then, as I got older, generally just fascinated by interesting houses and their owners and all of the decisions the owners make, consciously or without really knowing it, to make their homes unique.
I wanted to own a bed and breakfast when I was growing up - not because I particularly relished the idea of having to get up at 5am to make Mr and Mrs Ravenscroft a boiled egg each before their early departure, but because it would mean lots more rooms to decorate and find furniture for.
Dwellings, in general, just make my heart flutter. Anything from Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’s burrow to huge stately homes, the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel to a fisherman’s loft in a barnacled harbour: show me them all! I want to know what the kitchen table is like and what patterns they have on the curtains and how many blankets are layered beneath the little patchwork quilt.
(There’s a strong lean, I have to say, towards cottage-y things and old houses when I’m doing all of this swooning and heart-fluttering. The fact I live in a quite masculine-looking mid century house does not escape my notice or curiosity and we shall return to this subject shortly.)
So yes, you can imagine that doing up an entire little thatched-roof cottage, for my actual job, is heaven on earth. But still, there’s this familiar sense of anxiety about it all. What if I choose the wrong things? What if I paint it all bright green because I think it’s edgy and then have to tell Rich to paint over it again because I hate it and it takes four coats of Obliterate before the green stops showing through? (True story.)
Shall I tell you where I start, when I’m thinking about colour schemes and how to decorate? When I’m working out how I’m going to furnish a room? Rhetorical question, actually, because I’m going to plough ahead whether you like it or not, but if you really don’t fancy hearing about my big sack of samples (lol) then navigate away from this page and read one of the many articles about the Met Gala that are floating around.
The following steps are the ones I take when I’m thinking about how to do a new room - or entire place - and panic that I have no idea where to start. Are these tips? Possibly. But it’s more of a thought process - a little guide to finding out what you like and then some pointers on what to do with that precious information.
1. FIND OUT WHAT SORT OF INTERIORS YOU ACTUALLY LIKE
This might sound obvious. Maybe you’ll say, I really like rustic farmhouse chic. Whatever that is. Or I love a Miami South Beach vibe. (Again, no idea. But keep going.) The problem with this, saying you love a certain style, is that it doesn’t help much if you don’t have a wood-beamed farmhouse kitchen to do up, or a white-rendered art deco house surrounded by palms.
What I think you have to do, personally, before you do anything else, is work out what exactly makes your heart beat faster when it comes to houses and interiors. You could even start with these styles you’ve just mentioned. What is it you like about the farmhouse look? Is it the cosiness? Is there an elegance to it? Is it the use of natural materials like oak for the beams and stone for the flagstones?
I think the best way to find all of this out, to work out what sort of home you want to create, is to collect together lots of pictures that you love and find out what links them. Do not use Pinterest for this, or Instagram, it’s too easy to go down a rabbit hole and also half the photos now seem to be AI which means that those interiors don’t even exist. Madness to use it as a starting point. What’s better is to get two or three interiors magazines instead, in real life. They could be old ones, it doesn’t matter, because we’re not following trends, here, we’re working out what calls to us.
Ka-kaaaa!
Sit there with the magazines and some scissors and cut out all of the images that you’re drawn to - it could be anything from a teapot to a mattress advert - and then take a good look at the collection at the end and be honest about what reels you in.
Is there loads of bold colour? Or are you drawn to clean, minimalist spaces? Realise that you can love both and also you can have loads of different interiors styles in the photos that you’ve selected. I live in a mid century house that could have been designed by AI using the prompt “James Bond ski lodge owned by an evil oil baron” but I also go silly over teeny cottages with log-burners and can’t get enough of silk pleated lampshades and oak-framed carver chairs. I have a cabin at the top of my garden that serves as my work studio and that looks like something out of Yellowstone, crossed with Soho Farmhouse.
The things that tie them all together? These spaces? I’d say the first thing is natural materials. Wood and stone. And then loads of layering of materials - wood next to stone, wool over wood, pattern over pattern. A muted colour palette of earthy tones. Cosy but calming on the mind. And everything looks lived in, but also sort of refined and well-considered. I think?
So. Cut out the images that make you feel good. Work out what it is about them, down to the most basic, basic element, that you love. Write those things down on a little checklist. Make that your mission statement for when you’re doing your house or room. Or even choosing a new sofa, changing a paint colour, thinking of how to frame a picture - if you’re dithering, go back to your checklist and your little pile of images. Does what you’re choosing make you feel the same way?
2. NARROW YOUR MATERIALS AND COLOURS DOWN TO A VAGUE PALETTE
You don’t have to do this. Or anything I’m suggesting on this page for that matter. This is just what I do and it’s very helpful to have it to refer to when I need to stop dithering about. If you’re prone to procrastination then sometimes too much choice is the enemy! I like to have a basic palette of ten or so paint and wallpaper colours and a few textures and materials that always make me feel at home and good about life. Velvets in dark, rich olives and deep figs. Weaves in multi-tones of warm brown and purplish beiges and taupes and hints of green. Faded, antiqued rugs, heavily patterned.
It has taken over ten years to really narrow things down to the shades I know I love, but now that I have, every successive project is a million times easier. (For paid subscribers, there’s a breakdown of my colour palette and the fabrics and textures I use again and again later on in this post. If you like the layered, lived-in look that I tend to go for then they’re nice resources to bookmark. You can use a free trial to unlock it, too.)
They’re usually warm neutrals, often with a red base. When I veer away from these, it’s always a mistake, which is why I really don’t like our bedroom wallpaper. It makes me feel edgy. It’s a palm leaf print but greyish-green and it’s out of sync with the entire rest of the house. And the ceiling is light! The contrast is too much, it irks me every time I look up, which is a lot, because it’s a bedroom and I spend much time horizontal.
Anyway! I think it’s quite fun putting a palette together. You can get big colour sample sets with large swatches from Farrow & Ball, they give you a better idea than those tiny squares, if you’re being all professional about things, and you can take the large swatches out and place them all side by side and so on. Great stuff. Hours of fun if you, like me, are unhinged about this sort of thing.
And this is where Pinterest does become helpful, because you can search pictures by paint colour and then hundreds of rooms come up and it gives you a good idea of what you might want to add to your shortlist. But keep referring back to your little original “love it” images - which tones drew you in then? Why? How do certain colours make you feel?
3. PLAY ABOUT JOYFULLY WITH SAMPLES AND SWATCHES
The most useful thing I ever do, when I’m thinking about how to decorate or furnish a new room (or cottage, seeing as though that’s what I’m doing at the moment), is haul out my gigantic bag of fabric and wallpaper samples. I also have bits of wood flooring in there, parts of floor tiles and even short sections of aluminium window frame. I’ve collected all of these over many years, but I love to clank them all out onto the floor and see how various textures and finishes sit together. It fulfils some kind of artistic need in me, without me having to draw or paint, which I’m rubbish at, so I find the whole thing very therapeutic.
The wallpaper and fabric samples are easy to collect. Most online furniture places will send you fabric swatches for free, John Lewis will do it with curtain fabrics, upholstery fabrics and wallpaper samples, Next will send curtain and upholstery squares. So will Dunelm. All convenient places, off the top of my head, it takes minutes to order them and it’s absolutely invaluable to see the real life materials in front of you and hold them in your hands.
Oh! And collect the samples in the colours and fabrics you are drawn to, NOT the ones you think will “fit your aesthetic”. Do away with this idea of an aesthetic, anyway: personally I want to live in a home that feels like me, not in a theme-park! OK fine, if you do your bedroom and it’s totally, like, Parisian Girl chic, then whatever. It has happened naturally. Don’t set out with Parisian Girl chic as your specific aim: remember the sorts of things you were drawn to in your pictures! Use the force, Luke! Don’t be swayed! Always go back to your little mission statement! Things I am drawn to.
4. BUY THINGS YOU LIKE
Once you’ve sorted out what colours you love, and whether you get turned on by flocked floral wallpaper and contrast neon woodwork or walls painted stark white, you can begin to look at things to order. But - and this seems like a really obvious one - only buy things you actually like. Don’t buy something you think is alright because it’s in the sale, or because it’s grey and so is your rug and so it’ll kind of match. Don’t buy just because “it’ll do”. There are so, so many options now of absolutely everything, in every single price range, from lamps to armchairs, from garden swing seats to toasters; there will almost always be an option that stands out to you and makes you think yeah, that’s the one I love!
(OK maybe not toasters. But actually yes, even toasters, because maybe you’re thinking you’ll get the pink SMEG one that you’ve seen loads of people feature on Instagram but when you go back to your mission statement, it says clean, graphic, calm, ordered, monochrome, and if those are the things that make you go ooohh then I would highly recommend the Dualit Architect 4 slice toaster. You’re welcome.)
There were only supposed to be three steps to this “where the hell to start with doing a house” thing, I’m not sure how we ended up with four. I think it’s because I started to dip into the “buying things” quagmire, when I was only going to talk about paint colours and fabrics. If you like this sort of thing, I can share the mood boards for the new cottage - The Dorset Nest - and tell you what I’ve ordered so far. Let me know in the comments, or click the heart button. You can follow The Dorset Nest on Instagram here to be the first to know when bookings go live and I also have a dedicated interiors page, @casacrilly if house stuff floats your boat!
Now for my vague, not-too-strict colour palette and most-used fabrics panel:
