Are you influenced or inspired?
Recently I went shopping for ankle boots, I knew which pair I wanted before I even went into the shop. I just needed to try them on to see if they were comfortable. Whilst I was there I spotted a similar pair, shoe shopping is my nemesis so I often buy several pairs of the same shoe, however my intention on this day was to have some control and only buy the one pair. I walked out with the original pair and the similar pair, telling Lee as we left that he was a “bad influence”. He pressed the right buttons and persuaded me to spend more money, thankfully I do like both pairs of shoes and it’s increased my footwear choices from two pairs to four so really it was a positive influence. But it made me think more about the word ‘influenced’, it’s a word that I’ve associated with pressure from social media.
We live in a world where we can tour fabulous homes and witness tremendous transformations without even leaving our sofas. For every hour spent on platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest you will see hundreds of photos. The shapes, colours and orientation is processed by the brain and we make connections to our emotions. Do we like it, love it or loathe it? Decisions are made in split seconds, we’re hard wired to make a judgement.
When faced with the overwhelm and decision fatigue of renovating a whole house or decorating a room we are vulnerable to making split second decisions and therefore mistakes. Considering our environment has a direct impact on how we feel, creating our home should not be a copy and paste job. It’s important that we make decisions that allow us to live how we want to in our home.
Rather than seeing a picture of a beautiful interior and wanting to simply recreate it, (which by the way is very easy given most people will share exact colours and where they got their furniture from), we need to build our inner critic who asks “why?” and be inspired rather than influenced.
First, here’s a few reasons why we should adopt a critical way of decision making:
Great interior design is sympathetic to the style of the building, for example a traditional farmhouse is complimented by neutral colours, warm tones from wood, rustic finishes and practical materials. Whereas a heritage home may incorporate Victorian botanical prints, rich materials such as velvet, and ornate period features. Sometimes inserting what we have seen created in someone else’s home just doesn’t fit with our building. The square peg in a round hole situation.
Function is at the centre of effective design, you may have your heart set on a specific piece of furniture, or have moved to a new house with furniture from your last house, let's use the example of an L shaped sofa. Perfect for family movie times, but not so perfect if the sofa means a route, window or door is obstructed. I can relate to this in my own home which we will be renovating. In our lounge we have four walls, three have a floor length window and one has a fireplace. We moved in with a sofa and two armchairs to create a nice sociable space. The problem is whichever way we position the furniture, windows are blocked. Architecturally we’ll be changing this but it’s an appropriate illustration of the need to prioritise function.
The intensity of natural light impacts colour. In a north-facing room the light is cool and blue tones are highlighted, dark colours will look darker and light colours, if not chosen correctly, will be muted and dim. South facing rooms should acknowledge the sun being high in the sky, and as a result light colours will glow whilst blues and greens will balance the light. Therefore using paint in blues and greys if we had a north facing room could make the room feel particularly cold, and very different to how we’ve perceived it in an image. You can read more about how light impacts colour here.
Colour influences mood and as a result colour psychology is often applied to help choose the palette used. Typically red is associated with power, passion and warmth whereas blue can evoke calm and tranquillity. Designers using a mindful approach will consider the client's purpose for a room in determining the tone, for example in an office energising colours such as orange and yellow may be included. If you have seen a colour used on the walls in a picture you like, question if it supports your desired emotions and if it works with the natural light, if not you could include the colour within a printed wallpaper or a printed fabric. You may see a leaf land in front of you on a walk and love the colours it displays, I think it's obvious that I am most inspired by the colours around me, the palette of the hills and the sea are threaded through all of my designs for Alpine.
Trends come and go, but if you choose what you love your house will become your story. Forgive me in advance for my controversial opinions here. At some point an interior retailer marketed baskets of blankets by a hall door, my opinion is this is not the place for a basket of blankets yet somehow it influenced the purchase and presentation of baskets overflowing with cosy blankets alongside hallway console tables. Why? Surely a waste of money, unless you don’t grab a coat on the way out and prefer to wear a blanket. Similarly, think critically about the trend of ‘coffee table books’, which are reported to add simple pops of colour without a lot of expense. It’s a crime, particularly at a time where sustainability and our role as consumers is magnified. If you want to read a book, buy it, and by all means have it to hand on your coffee table, but resist the influence of the category ‘coffee table books’ while online shopping. I’ll not start on pillows put into book shelves. Your home is not a shop, it doesn’t need to and shouldn’t mimic one. It should be yours and should reflect how you live. So if you have a basket of blankets in the hallway, bring them into the bedroom or lounge where they will be useful and enjoyed. Trends are also often carried through accessories, when all of a sudden you see everything in marble, everything in monochrome, everything in terrazzo it’s likely to be a trend. I prefer to see my accessories as a capsule collection of versatile objects that I love, less really is more. I adore mixed textures on vases because it reminds me of the coast where the shine of the sea meets the matt of the sand. Some of my favourite things in my capsule of accessories have been with me for years and years and I can’t imagine not loving them. So if you’re shopping for accessories, choose things that you love, that you will look at over and over again and remember a happy day, a special place or just because you simply love it.
Designing a room, or a whole house, is comparable to completing an intricate jigsaw puzzle; the pieces need to be assembled one by one to build the vision. Now that I’ve explained why I believe it’s important to resist influence, let's look at specific ways to use your inspiration.
If you didn’t know by now, my most important belief with interior design is that our homes should be unique to us, which is why I am so anti-copy and paste of a floor plan, colour scheme, materials and furniture. Instead we should take a reflective view of the constant stream of ideas and images we view and pinpoint what it is exactly that we like and don’t like, so that we can be inspired to tailor parts of what we see to create our perfect interior.
A simple way to do this is to collect images over a period of time, at least a few months (if you didn’t catch my blog on my property journey that’s a good example why time is important), and then review them often with fresh eyes. You can do this in a number of ways.
Old school cut out images from magazines, collect them on a large pinboard (great for moving around and playing with ideas). At the moment we have four large pin boards up on the wall in the office and I am enjoying building a collection of things that inspire me. You can even add things you’ve found that you love, a sample of fabric or an unusual speckled stone that’s washed up on the beach. I have a collection of treasures from the beach on my coffee table at the moment, they are a starting point for a bathroom scheme at Alpine. By having your inspiration up on the wall or near to you, you can keep looking at it, and you will begin to see what you are most inspired by.
Pinning photos of things you love onto a Pinterest board is another strategy, you can do this with images you have seen whilst searching on the app, images on websites and your own images from your camera roll, examples could include an armchair you’ve seen online, a ‘room’ in your favourite shop, a painting, or photographs from your morning walk. It’s a great app that’s really easy to use and doesn’t demand much time at all, it’s great to be able to have separate pin boards for different rooms and I love that it suggests other images you might like too.
It’s possible to save other peoples posts into ‘collections’ on Instagram. You do this by hitting the flag-like symbol below a post, it will pop up with ‘Save to collection’ then you can create a collection, almost like a folder. You can have individual folders for different rooms or styles maybe. Then as you browse each collection you will see a grid of all of your saved images beside one another. Again include components, not just whole rooms, for example a handmade lampshade, a scene in nature or a piece of pottery you’d love to own. If you use these photos in mood boards or pin them to Pinterest you must credit the account.
Once you’ve collated your snippets of inspiration it’s time to leave it and return to it regularly. You should start to spot common features, do all the kitchens have a quartz worktop? Are you attracted to striped fabrics or specific prints? Is there a particular colour palette? Are you favouring soft textures? Don’t forget to identify things you don’t like in what you’ve assembled together as this is extremely helpful if you don’t know where to start.
In following this process it will hopefully become second nature to you to really ask “why?” and begin to connect your emotions to your home. When you connect to emotions new ideas are generated, you will have more energy, enthusiasm and your own ideas will flow.
You are the artist of your own life, don’t hand the paintbrush to someone else.
I am determined to help make positive change to people and how they live in their homes, if you would like some help I am here to offer it, please just get in touch.
Thank you for reading,
Charlotte
