Interior decorating can be daunting. If you’re anything like me then prior to a decorating project you spend hours looking at images of perfect homes, cosy rooms and beautiful decor…only to wonder how on earth you bring that look to your own house. I’m a complete interiors nut (and if I wasn’t a journalist I’d have loved to have been an interior designer) but it’s so hard to be brave and confident with interior decorating.
Interiors trends come and go as quickly as fashion trends but where it’s easy to try a clothing trend before deciding it’s not for you, the ‘tried and tested’ mentality is a lot harder when we’re talking about furniture, paint colours or fabrics. If you paint your kitchen bright pink and decide you hate it three days later, it’s not that easy to remedy. Doing up our house in England has taught me lots about how to add pattern and colour to your house confidently!
Wicklewood is a favourite of mine and they have four design principles for making a house yours: colourful throw cushions, bold area rugs, beautiful bedding and decorative accents. Wicklewood is all about fun, affordable and colourful home items that you can take with you, and they work with expert artisans all over the world who use classic textile techniques to bring their colourful vision to life. The company origins lie in Guatemala where the founder Caroline’s great-great-grandmother spent her life collecting a vast range of Mesoamerican textiles. Now, Wicklewood takes inspiration from as far as Hawaii and India and again proves that adding pattern or colour into your home needn’t be a nerve-wracking exercise.
The company also has roots with one of my go-to fabric houses, Blithfield. Well known for bright fabrics in bold patterns, Wicklewood have used this fun attention to colour and re-imagined it in items for the home. If it means I can have my favourite materials in more places in the house, then I’m sold.
My trip to San Miguel earlier this year was a huge eye opener about how to bring colours into your interiors. Hibiscus Linens (founded by Mariana Barran Goodall who I met in Mexico) is a company that marries traditional needlework and embroidery skills with modern designs and details. Hibiscus Linens (named after the glasses of hibiscus tea that Mariana’s parents gave their guests) teaches the old world stitching methods so that each piece is handmade and totally unique. These artisan linens from centuries old techniques come in a range of colours and styles for even the most modern of homes- I’m obsessed and they’re utterly beautiful. Hibiscus Linens make napkins and hand towels, bedding and baby clothes and, having picked up a few bits in Mexico, I can vouch that they’re extremely special. Adding little pops of colour to your house with these sorts of smaller items is an excellent starting point.
Mexico is one of the most colourful places I’ve ever visited but the colour comes through in the details; clothing, homewares and textiles. Adding pattern or colour to our own homes doesn’t have to be on a large scale. Little accents of colour on bedding, cushions and lampshades will all work to tie a scheme together and these sorts of items are so easy to chop and change. Everything from books to plants and artwork will inject some warmth into a room so don’t assume that you have to go wild with wallpaper to really give a room a makeover.
Shop my top colourful and patterned home picks in the above links and follow @LouiseRoeHome on Instagram to see how we do up our new home in England. I’ll be putting all my ideas very much into practice.
