Home Style Secrets

By Alex Brooks

Bad home style sneaks up on you. Busy with family, work, blah, blah. Before you know it, you’re sitting on a sofa with bum sags and coffee stains, deluding yourself the fruit bowl on the kitchen table is a great contribution to home style .

Most of us sneakily aspire to come home to one of those magazine-perfect abodes, yet few of us use enough oimagination to work out what that really means to us. The best homes are those that are livable, thought-through and loved. Houses are a work in progress. And here are some tips to start the progress.
Find your inner house love: A home should honour your presence in it. Hang a beautiful something on the wall to inspire you. Fill it with things you love. Keep it (reasonably) clean. Don’t let your guests want to leave.

Train your eye: Taste can be learnt – so start. Developing a sense of what looks good is a matter of practice. Retail shop displays, friends’ homes, fashion, anything can inspire you to want to touch-own-want-covet. And when that covet bug strikes, try and work out why: is it the colour, the texture, the dimensions? You’ll soon find a common theme among what you love. So follow it.
Recognise quality, in any price range: Yes folks, it’s true. You don’t have to blow the budget to find quality. If you’re buying cheap flowers – great! If the more expensive flowers drop dead a day after putting them in a vase … that sucks. Quality is about enduring looks, scale, proportion, durability and whether it’s fit for the purpose you plan for.
Don't follow fads: The more understated and elegant the interior, the longer it will last. Remember rag-rolling and shabby chic? That’s what will end up happening with black appliances and flatscreen tellies ... they will seem sooo 2009.
Colour love: Paint is the fastest way to bring a room to life. Decide whether you like plains or accents and then work out what you most want to live with. Colours should inspire and delight – for some that means being bold, for others it means creating a neutral palette of whites or off-whites from which all their beautiful things can shine. Now before you pick up a paint brush, slackers guide to cleaning if it’s a problem for you.