Home Décor | Lessons in home ownership and not falling prey to Pinterest

(A blue so dark its black at night. I’ve paired this with so many patterns that it can make your head spin when falling into bed with a too big glass of wine firmly planted in your belly.)

Whether you’re renting, own a property or heavens, even live with your folks how do you think about buying furniture and designing a room?

I have heard so often and from so many people about how you should buy your larger pieces in neutral colours that I’m beginning to think that the whole world operates in monochrome. We are told daily, don’t buy that bright pink velvet chair unless you’ve got cash to burn. If I won the lottery I would . . . sort of thinking. Let me burst the bubble; you don’t have to play it safe.

During the house hunting process I had boards and boards of Pinterest with ‘minimalist’ design. I am talking full on grey as an accent colour style minimalism. It was fun, it was very capsule wardrobe obsession led but ultimately when I looked around at our existing furniture I realised, this dream of living the simple life was so not fun and so not going to happen!

In between these times I found, Abigail Ahearn and I quite frankly fell in love. She is this bold, experimental, love her colour, paint all your rooms dark designer and I fell really hard with her book, colour.

Within an hour I was thinking about bronze leaf kitchens, wood cladded hallways like a men’s smoking room and painting everything a dark moody blue. Suddenly I felt so revived that I went home to re-fall in love with our dark red leather couch. I re understood why I laid on our red and orange floral stool from my mums store in the middle of the showroom one afternoon. Quite frankly everything made sense in my world again.

(A floral velvet Chair from TK. I stood in the Wandsworth branch for a full ten minutes drooling. Wondering, how I could convince Josh that the £300 price tag was an investment and moreso how he should for sure detour from Maidenhead to Wandsworth to drive us, (me and the chair) back to our home in Kent that evening. Ultimately, I realised this wasn’t going to fly. Especially after six snapchats from different angles went ignored. Thats not to say I’m not still waiting, thinking that he might re stumble across these and shout, lets go! Need that chair! He won’t however, sad.)

I had gotten so tied into this idea that a Scandinavian home would make me happy. I forgot that this home is not for Instagram. It’s for us and we like to be brave with our choices. I’m not afraid of making our long galley living room feel smaller by painting the room aubergine and bronze. Just think how wonderful that colour is going to feel in winter when we are watching The Flash or Arrow buried under our mountain of pillows and the long haired faux fur throw that I have yet to purchase.

Suddenly it makes sense. A narrow, armless futon in a rough grey fabric will never make me happy, so we paint our house in all the colours. We look forward to not thinking about paying out for a wedding so we can buy occasional chairs in crazy coloured florals even when it doesn’t match the rest.

This by the way is home bravery and if you didn’t catch it, this is happiness.

(Zebra rug, probably for a childs bedroom. It looks far better under my dining table.)