Transform your living room this Spring with loose covers from Plumbs. With hundreds of fabrics to choose from including cottons, linens, chenilles, easy care stretch fabrics plus luxury velvets, loose covers are ideal if you’re looking for a slightly more informal way to update your furniture.

Offering an alternative solution to replacing a tired sofa or chair, Plumbs loose covers are hand crafted from start to finish and made to measure, which means that they look, fit and feel as good, if not better, than the original upholstery. Plumbs even offer co-ordinating curtains!

From on-trend botanical prints and opulent purples and deep reds to countryside-inspired florals and natural fabrics, Plumbs diverse loose cover collections offer something for everyone.

If your furniture is over ten years old then re-upholstery could be the perfect way to bring a well-loved sofa or chair back to life. Re-upholstery allows you to keep all the original features of your existing furniture, including the shape, comfort and style, but in a brand new fabric.

Plumbs upholstering services range from standard recovering to complete reupholstery including any wooden features, studded work and button backs.

What’s in and what’s not? Find out if you current decor is out of date or if you’ve pre-emptied what the interior design fashion police are saying your home should like be this year.

Excerpt: According to Pantone, “Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world” – the perfect anecdote to a turbulent 2009!

Read the full article here…

Throughout homes this spring, on all types of furnishings from fabrics and wallpaper to homewares, leaf motifs and tree designs and patterns are blooming. It seems like the biggest trend this season is ‘going back to nature’.

“Its appeal is perhaps symbolic of our desire for a simpler life and a need for a stronger connection with the natural world,” suggests Sarah Quilliam, head of product design for Hillarys, a window blinds specialist.

“When times get tough there’s a tendency to return to a more organic, holistic and nature-inspired feel in the home.”

Annie Deakin, editor of online home shopping emporium mydeco.com, agrees: “This year marks the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the focus on nature has helped heighten the focus on textiles and home products which echo that theme,” she said.

Deakin says it’s time to turn on to funky botanical wallpaper and fabrics for a bang-up-to-date take on bringing the ‘outdoors in’.

There are many ways in which to reproduce this look in your home by using a feature wall of woodland print wallpaper and scatter cushions.

“Woodland patterns are huge this season,” says House Beautiful style editor Charlotte Boyd.

“Even if you don’t have a large garden, it’s possible to create a sense of the natural world in your home by using one of the new designs.”

She suggests adding a touch of woodland spirit with one of the new metallic tree motif papers.

With the housing market crawling to a halt and Spring just around the corner, people are looking for cheap ways update their tired decor and give it a brand new twist.

There is a great article here:

Give tired decor a modern twist

From the Hexham Courant, there’re some really good ideas on how to do this. Take a look!

Have you ever thought that something as simple as arranging your furniture in a different way could help save you money. Well here it is, like most households in the UK, people often arrange their living room around their TV’s. The obvious affect of this is the TV is most probably always on.

Just by simply re-arranging your furniture so that the focal point will encourage conversation, such as positioning sofas and chairs around a table or facing each other rather than pointing at the TV.

Not only will his save you money in the long term by not always having the TV on but it can also create a healthier family environment.

Curtains are a great way to hide flaws in your home and can bring symmetry to most rooms. These are some really simple tips and tricks interior designers and staging consultants use to make a room look far better just by using curtains.

• If a room consists of several windows at differing sizes, first take the measurements and dress the largest window. Then hang all the other curtains in the room at the same height making sure that all the hems are also at the same height off the floor.
• If you want to create the illusion of wider windows extend the curtains poles and width beyond the window frame.
• Alternatively, if you want to make the window look shorter, use a longer pelmet when dressing the window.

In a previous post I hopefully helped you understand how colour can affect your mood and bring out your personality. If you haven’t read it, please click on the link below:

Colour can effect your mood in all sorts of ways

You should have a vague idea of what colours you are wanting to use in your home. The tricky part now is, how do you put them together to give a cohesive and flowing feel throughout your home?

Often people assume paint is the main factor when decorating a room, in fact it is as much about the colour of accessories, furniture and soft furnishings. You should always consider the contrast between them all. When painting a room, remember that paint looks a different colour in the shop than it is in your home, so always take a test sample home with you to try out before buying in quantity! Whatever you do though don’t worry about choosing the wrong colour, walls can easily be painted over.

When using bold and spicy colours, also known as ‘Active’ colours, keep them simple and in small doses so they are not competing. ‘Active’ colours such as yellow, orange and red will stand out in a room and dominate most other colours so should ideally be used against a neutral backdrop.

Using bold colours to achieve a visual effect can also be done by combining neutral colours with different textures, which can be just as visually stimulating. Also lighter, less saturated, natural colours will make a room seem larger than it is, whereas the deeper and more intense range of the spectrum will pull the walls in around you and give a cosier felling.

When mixing and matching colours, natural shades of greens and browns are by far the easiest to use, as you tend to find them in nature. If decorating with a brown colour scheme, adding plants and greenery will lighten up the feeling and bring life to your room.

A flowing feel of colour throughout your home creates a greater impact but can sometimes be quite difficult to achieve. However, simple touches such as using the same colour in the skirting boards and door surrounds can go a long way to pull it all together.

When you have large areas or objects to colour like floors and sofas that generally have a higher price associated. Keeping them neutral will help when tastes and fashions inevitably change. Painting over a few walls is always going to be more cost effective than changing a carpet or sofa. If you don’t have the time or energy to start painting again, the alternative option for your sofa would be loose covers, which are far cheaper than buying new and have the same effect.

People generally forget about ceilings so most often than not are just left white. If you do want to be different then using a lighter shade of the wall colour will usually work quite well, unless the ceiling is over 8 feet then use a darker shade.

Just remember getting used to a new room colour might take a few days. Once you start filling a room with other elements you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised to see that your new colours harmonise

Learn more tips here about how to choose a colour scheme here.

Read Part 1 here….

If you are thinking of buying a decorative rug either for your wall or floor, here are just a few things you might want to consider.

As colour takes on the most fundamental role in any decor, this should be your highest priority when choosing a rug for your home. If a room’s existing colour scheme is very bright and fussy the rug needs to be a controlling natural colour / design. On the other had, if you already have a natural scheme, a nice bright splash of colour and striking design will really make it the centre piece of any room. Sometimes a rug should enhance the existing decor and not stand out, using an already dominant or accent colouration will have this effect.

I’ve written a previous post about how using colour in a room affects you mood, which might be helpful in deciding your colours:

Colour can effect your mood in all sorts of ways

You might also want to consider how much wear and tear the rug will go through, if you have children or pets a darker and intricate patterned rug will fare far better over time. Just remember to make sure any patterns on the rug do not clash with those on the wall-paper or other soft-furnishings.

You might think that you can just go out and buy a rug without giving too much thought into the size and where exactly it fits into your room’s layout. This really depends on the purpose of the rug and which room it will belong. If you are planning on the rug covering the majority of the room then there should be the same amount of floor space on each side, even if the room is an irregular shape then it still needs to have some sort of symmetry.

There are some basic rules when adding rugs to certain rooms, take the lounge for example. If the rug is going to sit under a coffee table then the entire table should be on the run and all pieces of furniture set back from it at equal distances. You should always consider where a rug will be placed in a room in relation to everything else, as long as there symmetry generally you will be ok. If you find it hard visualising where the rug will site, use some masking tape to define the space and play around until you are comfortable with the position.

Just remember that there are a huge variety of styles, and sizes to fit any decor or budget. So make sure you find the right one before buying.

I’ve always thought of a rug to be something that is placed on the floor to add a touch of warmth and comfort along with an touch of colour to a room, even sometimes being more practical rather than decorative.

However there is a growing trend of using rugs as purely decorative features to revitalise a home by hanging them on walls, these are known as decorative rugs / wall hanging / tapestry. Generally having little or no practical value, these rugs are mostly exhibited on walls in the living room or bedroom but can also been used on beds and as table, chair and sofa covers. Although I would always have to recommend made to measure sofa covers if you wanted to restore an old sofa.

If searching online you’ll most likely come across many Persian or Oriental styled rugs from Asia and other countries such as Turkey, Iran & Egypt with a few modern and contemporary designs here and there. I would definitely recommend buying a rug made from natural materials such as silk and cotton not only for quality reasons but also they have less environmental impact. You could also find a number of companies producing bespoke rugs, which are great if you are looking for a specific design, colour or size.

Decorative Rugs can be a stunning addition to your home bringing dramatic effects to every room, you can even change them with seasonal fashions and take them with you when you move.

Use decorative rugs to spruce up your home – part 2

Vibrant colours often extend from nature and objects surrounding us from lush grassy green fields with radiant flowers to pillar box red post boxes and jet black skies with glaring white stars. Colour is something that surrounds us on a daily basis and does influence our lives and moods, I hope I can explain how you can bring certain colours into to your home to compliment your own personality and lifestyle.

Lets take the 9 popular colour groups:

Red – this is the colour we pay most attention to and is associated with several emotions such as love, desire & passion. When using red colours in the decor of a home they should be used as accents or dramatically in rooms that are seldom lived in. If you are a passionate person then the bedroom would be ideal!!

Yellow – most of the emotions evoked by yellow can be classed as positive such as joy, happiness, optimism & hope. Because yellow is a warm colour it often gives the sense of cosiness and hospitality to a room, which is great for casual interiors such as a day room or conservatory.

Orange – being a combination of yellow and red, orange is a warm colour but not as vibrant as red and as calming as yellow. Orange is good for expressing energy and can emote enthusiasm and flamboyancy, by also stimulating conversation orange is a great colour for any living room.

White – often white is seen as a representation of purity, cleanliness and peace but when used in the home it can enhance, energise and beautifully contrast with any other colour. White is the most versatile of all colours being a combination of them all, because of it’s reflective nature it gives a room a fresh, clean and airy feeling.

Pink – like red, pink is associated with love and desire but loses the raw passion red can induce. Romance is never far from this colour and always delivers feel good emotions.

Purple – as purple dye was initially made from the mucous gland of a snail it was only available to the very rich, hence representing royalty and notability. Nowadays, purple is still an exotic and mysterious colour sometimes being thought of as gloomy. Make sure if using purple to keep the tones rich and vibrant.

Green – often being referred to as the most favoured colour, green brings a calming influence to a room with some people giving it healing powers. Being a colour which represents the environment, green it is very much a colour of the moment.

Blue – you can’t get much cooler than blue, which represents peace, tranquillity & calm. Cool colours are seen as dignified and conservative so are more suitable for formal rooms. Blue is also considered a business colour as it reflects reliability.

Black – along with red, black is a very powerful colour bringing out strong emotions such as power, sexuality, sophistication, elegance and wealth. Again like red black should not be used in a dramatic sense but just to accent other colours.

Just remember, paint is only the first step to deciding colour of a room. The next steps are layers of colour with accessories such as upholstery, fabrics, rugs, curtains, loose sofa covers, lighting and plants etc…