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If your side table always looks messy no matter what you put on it, the problem usually isn't what's there. It's that no...
26/09/2026

If your side table always looks messy no matter what you put on it, the problem usually isn't what's there. It's that nothing is holding it together.

Start with a tray. Put four things straight onto a table and it reads as clutter. Put those same four things on a tray and it reads as deliberate, because the tray gives the group an edge and your eye takes that edge as a decision rather than as things that got left there.

Then vary the heights. One tall thing, usually a lamp, and everything else stepping down from it. If it's all roughly the same height your eye has nowhere to go and the whole lot just looks like stuff.

And at least one thing should be old. A corner made entirely of new things always looks like a shop display rather than somebody's house.

That's the whole thing, and it works anywhere. A side table, an ottoman, a coffee table, the end of a kitchen island. Almost everything in these photos I already owned, so it costs nothing if you've got a tray in a cupboard.

If the styling is the easy bit and the bigger decisions have you stuck, book a free 15 minute intro call and we'll talk about working together on it.

24/09/2026

Search how to heat a cold room and you'll be told to shorten your curtains so they clear the radiator.

I'd never do that. Sill length curtains over a rad look mean, and they date a room the second they go up. That's fixing the radiator, not the room you've got to sit in.

So here's the order I'd actually work in. The draughty external door first, because in older houses round here that's the coldest corner every time. Then a Roman blind inside the recess to close against the glass at night, with your curtains hanging full length outside the recess where they're nowhere near the rad. Then wool rugs on stone and tile, big enough that the furniture sits on them. Then warm the person, not just the room. A proper blanket on the sofa you actually sit on and the lamps on instead of the big light.

The last two don't change the temperature at all. They change how cold it feels, which is the bit that matters when you're sat in there in February.

If there's one room in your house that's always cold and you've been putting it off, send me a message and we'll talk about working together on it.

Gallery wall rules aren't set in stone, so this isn't the only way to do one. It's the relaxed version, where at first g...
21/09/2026

Gallery wall rules aren't set in stone, so this isn't the only way to do one. It's the relaxed version, where at first glance nothing on the wall matches.

Look a bit closer and there's a thread running through it. Roughly 80% of it is warm muted tones and 20% breaks the rule on purpose, to give it some interest. The lobster is the loudest thing on the wall and it's there deliberately. That balance is what stops it looking like a jumble, even though what's in the frames is all over the place: fabric offcuts, art we picked up travelling, prints we bought because we liked them, and a couple of snippets cut out of magazines.

The frames don't match each other either. Black, oak, one with a green mount, all on the same wall.

The looser the contents, though, the harder the spacing has to work. Even gaps are the one thing your eye reads as order. Get that consistent and you can hang almost anything. Get it wrong and the wall looks messy however lovely the individual pieces are.

Hang it lower than feels right. Almost every gallery wall is hung too high, because people instinctively centre it on the wall rather than on the sofa underneath. It should relate to the furniture, so the gap above the back cushions ends up smaller than you'd expect.

And the wall lights are part of the arrangement rather than lighting that happens to be near it, so space them the same way you space everything else.

If you prefer the tight symmetrical version, that's a different look and I'll do a separate post on it.

If you've got a wall you've been avoiding and there's a decision coming on it, book a free 15 minute intro call and we'll talk about working together on it.

17/09/2026

Earlier this week I talked about why north facing rooms go grey when you paint them white. Several of you asked what happens if you want pattern rather than paint, so here are four wallpapers that work in those rooms.

The principle is the same. North light arrives grey and blue and it stays that way all day, so a paper on a white or cool ground gets colder as the afternoon goes on. A warm ground gives that light something to sit on, and the room holds its colour into the evening.

Forêt by Nina Campbell in butter yellow. A woodland scene with painted leaf silhouettes, and it's the yellow ground doing most of the work rather than the pattern.
Truffle by Sanderson in Rowan Berry
Cubby by GP & J Baker in Soft Red
Cynthia by Josephine Munsey in Mushroom & Blue

Warm ground, not white ground. That's the whole thing, and it holds for almost any pattern you happen to like the look of.

If you've got a north facing room and a papering decision coming, book a free 15 minute intro call and we'll talk about working together on it.

Send me the other three and I'll write their lines to match the first.

If you want a bit of colour in a room but the thought of painting the whole thing puts you off, this is the version I'd ...
16/09/2026

If you want a bit of colour in a room but the thought of painting the whole thing puts you off, this is the version I'd suggest.

Put it on the joinery and leave the walls alone. The colour sits on one piece of furniture, the room stays light, and if you've gone off it in two years you're repainting a bookcase rather than four walls and a ceiling. Far less to undo.

This green is soft enough that in daylight it barely reads as green at all. It earns its keep in the evening, when it stops the lamplight bouncing round the room.

The shape is doing as much work as the colour, mind. Arches, a proper cornice on top, cupboards below so the bottom half is solid. Take those away and you've just got a painted shelf unit.

If you're deciding whether to build into an alcove or leave it, and there's a decision coming, book a free 15 minute intro call and we'll talk about working together on it.

14/09/2026

If you've painted a north facing room and it came out grey when the tin said white, you haven't done anything wrong. It's the light.

North facing rooms get cold blue light all day and never get direct sun. That's why the white you loved in the shop looks grey and slightly grubby once it's on the wall.

The instinct is to go brighter to compensate. It doesn't work. A brighter white just gives the cold light more to bounce off and the room ends up feeling like a corridor.

You've got two ways out. Pick something with a warm undertone so it has a bit of yellow or pink in it to fight the blue. Or stop fighting it and go deeper, because a north facing room that's committed to being dim is far nicer to sit in than one that's pretending.

Test it on the actual wall, not a colour card in your hand, and look at it at four in the afternoon rather than at eleven in the morning. That's when you'll find out.

If you've got a north facing room you've been putting off and there's a paint decision coming, book a free 15 minute intro call and we'll talk about working together on it.

My desk has a curtain on it, and there's a reason.Behind it there's a printer and a tangle of cables I got sick of looki...
03/09/2026

My desk has a curtain on it, and there's a reason.

Behind it there's a printer and a tangle of cables I got sick of looking at. I could have bought a desk with a cupboard built in. But this one was already here, it's oak, and it's a better thing than most of what I'd have replaced it with. So it got a skirt in striped ticking instead.

Home offices go wrong when they're treated like offices. This corner sits in a room I actually spend time in, so it had to look like it belongs there. The old chapel chair, the jute underfoot. None of it says work.

Last image is what I was actually doing at that desk this week. Bedroom elevations, radiator position, the lot.

If you're working out where the office goes in your house without losing the room to it, that's what the free 15 minute intro call is for. Tell me the room and what's currently wrong with it.

I love to mix pattern... the trick is scale, not colour. Everyone gets stuck trying to match the shades and then ends up...
26/08/2026

I love to mix pattern... the trick is scale, not colour. Everyone gets stuck trying to match the shades and then ends up with three prints that are all roughly the same size, which is why it feels busy rather than layered.

So what's working here. The terracotta leaf print is the big one, it does the talking. The gold checkerboard is mid, it holds the middle. The blue ticking stripe is small and repetitive and it's basically doing the job of a plain. Three different sizes, so your eye has somewhere to rest.

The embroidery in the middle could be a problem. It's beautiful and it's the same scale as the leaf print, so they're both shouting. One of them may have to go.

The other thing nobody tells you: you need something with no pattern at all. That plain oatmeal linen looks like the boring one. It's the reason the rest of it works.

If you've got a room where you've bought three patterns you love and it's somehow gone wrong, that's usually the scale. Book a free 15-minute intro call and tell me what you've got.

24/08/2026

Same room. Same angle. Same house.

The difference isn't budget — it's decisions. Where the light falls. What stays and what goes. Which three things do the heavy lifting so the other thirty don't have to.

Most people can see that a room isn't working. Far fewer can see why. That's the bit I'm for.

I'm based in Derbyshire, working across the county and beyond — period homes and new builds both. If there's a room you've been going round in circles on, drop me a message and I'll send over my pricing guide.

19/08/2026

A “simple” room redesign is roughly 200 decisions, and about 190 of them are things you’d never think to think about. Where the sockets go. Whether that lovely white turns yellow at 4pm because the room faces north. Whether the wardrobe will actually make it up the stairs (ask me how I know).
Most people don’t want to be making those calls on a Tuesday night. They just want the room to feel right when they walk in.
That’s my bit.
I’m based in Derbyshire and work with homes across Duffield, Belper and the wider DE56 area — period properties and new builds both. If there’s a room you’ve been going round in circles on, send me a message and I’ll pop my pricing guide over. No obligation, no hard sell.

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