Weekends are the perfect time to refresh your home† and you don’t have to renovate to get a new look† Updating your walls, adding new fabrics, or simply rearranging what you already have can have a transformative effect.
If you missed the chance to update your house of a spring makeoverfear not – there’s still plenty of time to freshen it up a bit and we’ve got all the tips and tricks to do it in an affordable way.
Interior designer Flora Soames and stylist and designer Gabby Deeming spoke to the Telegraph and shared their advice for choosing colors and patterns and arranging your furniture and accessories in the best possible way.
Watch the full talk here and read on for their expert tips.
Top tips to freshen up your home in 2022
1. When choosing a paint color, first think about how you want to feel in the room
“I painted my bedroom walls Old White by Farrow & Ball,” says Gabby Deeming. “It’s a bit like being in a book, it feels very peaceful. But if you want your room to liven up more, maybe it’s a matter of picking up something bright in the room – a yellow lamp base or picture frame, or a color in a photo, and painting the walls that color that will bring it to the space. to live.”
When choosing a paint color to match a patterned fabric, Soames recommends not getting too hung up on finding the perfect match: “Sometimes choosing a paint color that is one shade away from a color can in one fabric keep the whole look together,” she says.
2. Remember that the finish of the paint can be just as important as the color
“Sometimes it’s a matter of not just playing with color, but also playing with the effect,” says Soames. “To me, gloss paint is a great way to make an impression in a room. High gloss is complicated to apply and needs a very smooth background that is as smudge-free as possible, but it creates a jewel box effect and reflects the light beautifully.”
“The other brilliant place to use a gloss paint is in a kitchen,” adds Deeming. “If you have a kitchen that you want to redecorate, gloss paint works really well as a splashback instead of tile because it’s very practical — you can just wipe it off.”
3. Forget the rules when it comes to painting woodwork and ceilings
Focus on the effect you want to achieve, Deeming says. “You can paint the ceilings, woodwork, walls and floors all the same color, or paint your woodwork a contrasting color; it all looks good,” she says. “I like the ‘complete’ look, where the walls, ceiling and woodwork are the same colour, because it feels cocooning and beautiful; while painting the woodwork a different color emphasizes the architecture so it looks more custom.” If you choose to paint your woodwork and ceiling white, make sure you pick the right one: “I painted my dining room in Farrow & Ball’s Pink Ground and the woodwork in Wimborne White, which is a soft white,” says deeming . “A bright white would have looked awful with that soft pink; you have to choose your shade of white carefully.”
4. When using wallpaper, stay away from a feature wall
“It smacks of a lack of commitment,” Deeming says. “Wallpaper is at its best in the round. If you only have one wall of wallpaper, you have to pick a paint color for the other walls, and they can fight a bit. You’ve invested in the paper, but it’s not working as hard as it should. If you look on Instagram or in magazines, you can see on all the walls how beautiful wallpaper can look when done right.”