5 Tips to Spur On Your Interior Design Gumption

Casting the Midas Touch over your interiors is not all as easy as throwing a bucket of paint on the walls and potting a few plants – there’s a few rules to abide by, and then just as swiftly break. To give you a bit more gumption and guide your decision making, we’ve got a few inside tips from Mad About the House author and blogger, Kate Watson-Smyth: 

1. Layer your neutrals

A room layered with soft neutral colours can be a beautiful thing. If that is your style then you need to include lots of texture and different materials to keep it interesting – wood and wool, velvet and metal, and rugs and cushions in different materials. You can create an entire room in white, and as long as there is texture it will work.

2. Always use black

Always have something black in every room to provide definition and drama. I would go further even further with something new, something old, something black and something gold (or any coloured metallic, but that didn’t rhyme).

3. Be inspired by the unsuspecting 

I’m inspired all the time by usual and unusual places – I love a restaurant loo.

4. Take a look online

I love the ‘Accidentally Wes Anderson‘ Instagram account. When it comes to blogs I just dip in and out of them; I don’t want to look at too many too often incase I inadvertently copy something. However, Making Spaces is good, and French for Pineapple is brilliant.

5. Look closer at where you live

One of my favourite things is being driven around the city and being able to look up and see the wonderful architectural details that you miss when you are on foot and having to look where you are going. So put me in a taxi – preferably with an open roof – and drive me around the centre of London so I can really look at all the detail.

Got some interior tips of your own to share? Tell us in the comments below…