Some homes appear so timeless that you can’t tell whether the interiors are the result of a recent renovation, or whether they might have evolved slowly over five decades. On other occasions, there are obvious hallmarks of the past that haven’t held up quite so well. Ruffled swag curtains – while not for everyone and loathed by some – can still work in the right period home, whereas time capsule relics such as the Artex ceilings and clunky gas fireplaces of this writer’s youth were best left in the 1980s.
House & Garden has always celebrated individuality, and we don’t believe in frequent redecorating to keep up with the neighbours, so we’d encourage you to ignore any of the below if you recognise something that you own and love. Decorating should be for your pleasure only, and if that pleasure is found in the wedding cake swirls of an Artex ceiling, so be it.
Plus, a decade ago we might have predicted that the coloured bathroom suite was gone for good and look what happened there. There are surely few baths as beautiful as the Rockwell in powder blue from The Water Monopoly. All that to say, do your own thing, regardless of trends – most things will sway in and out of favour as the years go by.
However, some ways of decorating and shopping have evolved for the better and our homes can benefit from a different approach. We explore some of them below…
Matching furniture sets
Much like Tom Selleck on our TV screens and chicken Kiev on our plates, the three-piece suite was once a staple in most homes. These days, matching furniture sets are a dated decorating concept and it’s far more interesting to the eye if you eschew the urge to kill three birds at once by buying a suite. If you need some semblance of order and symmetry, a pair of armchairs opposite a complementary (but non-matching) sofa is a more contemporary approach, even if the pieces themselves are traditional in style.
This same logic could also be applied to other rooms in the home. If you choose a matching dining table and chairs, that’s a great place to stop. Don’t be tempted to add a dresser and sideboard from the same furniture range – it crosses the boundary between tasteful and overkill.
Likewise in bedrooms; with so many brilliant makers and brands to explore and the growing need for space-saving solutions that don’t waste an inch, it’s a dated look to buy bedside tables, a chest of drawers and a freestanding wardrobe from the same collection. We can all be more creative (or, if budget allows, bespoke) than that.
Your furniture needn’t clash aggressively, but experiment with tones, shapes, materials and woodgrain; looking for a common thread that will make everything feel cohesive and intentional. Choose pieces that look like they could be cousins, rather than siblings.
Dated tech
Perhaps your DVD player, six racks of DVDs, an iPod dock (that’s no longer compatible with any device), bulky speakers, CD towers and hefty TV are in your living room because you never thought about overhauling things? It would be wasteful (and foolish) to part with dated tech that’s still in regular use, but if the shelves are full of dusty discs and old devices because of an overdue clear out, take this as your sign to part with bulky things that you don’t use anymore.
From music to film (records should be rightfully treasured), almost everything can be streamed, which renders dated tech and its many accoutrements, brackets, cables and remote controls surplus to requirement. Televisions and speakers are more discreet than ever, so there are myriad ways to conceal them or display them in a way that circumvents the need for a big media stand. If you’re in a position to switch to Spotify and digital TV, you could declutter, refresh a tired room and reclaim a lot of space.
Short curtains (sometimes)
When short curtains work perfectly in a room, it’s usually for practical reasons such as budget, radiator placement or restricted space. Interior designers also have a knack for knowing when they’ll enhance a room and draw attention in the right way. In fact, there’s been a noticeable resurgence of designers using short curtains unexpectedly.
However, in ordinary homes that didn’t have the good fortune of a designer’s expert eye being cast over them, a pair of curtains that end around the windowsill will visually cut the height of a room in half and interrupt the flow of space. A more flattering and widely preferred choice (where the hanging space is available), especially if you’re on the fence, is to choose floor-length curtains. Bespoke window dressing can cost a small fortune but increasingly, more shops are offering stylish ready-made curtains in plain fabrics (see Nordic Knots, Secret Linen Store, Zara Home and Att Pynta, to name a few).
Being too loyal to your favourite brand
When you find a particular shop or brand that you love, you might feel compelled to buy all your furniture from them immediately, in one Supermarket Sweep-style swoop. This is especially true if you’re renovating and furnishing entire rooms from scratch. Try to summon the willpower to choose just one or two favourite pieces. When you buy many items from a brand – especially if they’re all from one seasonal collection and the brand is recognisable – your home can unintentionally resemble a soulless showroom that will date quickly.
For an interior with longevity, collect slowly over time if possible and cast your net wider, shopping from a variety of sources. Adding a few vintage or antique pieces here and there will stop the room from looking like a brand catalogue.
Poorly planned lighting
Lighting should always be planned with the same level of attention to detail that you’d give to the wall colour or the furniture. More so, even, since it can cause a lot of mess and expense if you get it wrong and don’t wire for wall sconces where you need them, for example. Once upon a time, we’d watch TV under the unforgiving glow of the Big Light, but there’s no need to cast such an unflattering and flat light over the room or our faces now that we know better.
Go for layered, warm lighting with a combination of pendant, wall, standing and table lamps. Use additional task lighting only where it’s really needed. Bad lighting will ruin a perfectly beautiful room and date it quicker than you can search for Spandau Ballet on Spotify.
Bright, cool-toned light bulbs, grids of spotlights, glaring strip lights in the kitchen (heaven forbid) or just a single hanging light in the centre of the ceiling with no thought as to what its purpose is (lighting should be placed to enhance), is a look that belongs in the past. It doesn’t lend itself to feeling cosy or comfortable, either.
Following short-lived trends (instead of decorating for yourself)
Do you remember when shabby chic was all the rage, and the nation was frantically painting ornate Baroque-style furniture white before gently sanding it to look weathered and worn? It’s etched into our memories of core decorating trends from the past.
Likewise the mania for subway tiles with contrast dark grouting, or coffee shops installing industrial lighting with exposed filament bulbs as a signal that they were oh-so-hip. These examples couldn’t escape our attention when they were at their peak popularity, but now their moment has fizzled out, the homes that contain these pieces still feel time-stamped by highly recognisable designs that no longer feel exciting or new.
Cream boucle, chequerboard, scallops, top-to-toe beige, bobbin furniture, figurative line drawings, overzealous use of succulents, Millennial pink, shell-shaped everything, copious amounts of rattan, Anissa Kermiche vases, Matisse-style prints, terrazzo surfaces, matte black fixtures in bathrooms, ‘chubby’ furniture, marbled ceramics: that’s just the tip of the iceberg from the past few years.
Thanks to social media, our attention spans are shorter than ever and the trend cycle moves at frightening speed. Pay no mind to the relentlessness of the ins and outs, or the internet-fuelled encouragement to impress and overconsume. You don’t need to redecorate or replace your homeware to remain relevant. If you love something, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.
Anything is fine in moderation, just be wary of having too much of a good thing, or investing in several pieces that feel particularly prolific. When you pay no attention to whatever is being celebrated the loudest on social media, your home will truly feel like yours, rather than a fast-ageing tribute to whatever was being hyped at the time.
Misjudging the importance of scale
If you feel compelled to paint or wallpaper a room, don’t dabble with the chimney breast wall – have the confidence to commit to the whole thing. Feature walls belong firmly in the past. Likewise, tiny rugs that float aimlessly in front of the sofa and serve little purpose beyond making the room look smaller. Or an A4-sized artwork on a large expanse of wall that deserved something more impactful.
Don’t be frightened of going big. Small rooms don’t need to be filled with small things – it only makes them look smaller and more fragmented. Any nervousness around scale could be a decorating hangup (and possibly a habit) from years gone by. Now is as good a time as any to try something new – an area rug that anchors the whole space will make the room appear bigger, and colour drenching or pattern on every wall (and possibly the ceiling) will feel enveloping and calm.
As long as access isn’t a practical issue, larger pieces of furniture will give the illusion of more available space. If you’ve always sat nervously on the conservative side of decorating, experiment and see how size really does matter.
Environmental naivety
The world is burning because of the way we’re treating our planet, and as if that wasn’t scary enough, we have microplastics in our bloodstreams. In the past, we had the genuine excuse of naivety. We didn’t have the online resources, breadth of knowledge and years of research that we have today. To live in our homes now in the same way we might have lived in them 40 years ago isn’t just dated, it’s potentially bad for our health.
Just a couple of decades ago, we smoked in our homes until the walls turned yellow, we had indoor fires using materials that pumped toxic fumes into the air, we threw everything into the kitchen bin without recycling, and we thought nothing of buying things wrapped in vast amounts of unnecessary packaging.
No one needs to be a flawless example of avoiding waste, toxic materials and plastic – it’s genuinely difficult to avoid certain things, especially with a demanding life and the cost of everything – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There’s no excuse not to attempt to do our bit. And if we can ingest or inhale fewer toxic materials while we’re at it, even better.
Practically, that could look like: trying to avoid cheap and toxic paraffin candles with synthetic fragrances (for the sake of your health), minimising the use of indoor fires and being mindful of the type of fuel you’re choosing, also trying to avoid single-use plastic where possible and taking the time to separate your recycling.
You can make more forward-thinking choices when decorating and furnishing a home, too. Research the paint brands that you’d like to use and check their toxicity levels (Edward Bulmer and Graphenstone both offer natural paints that won’t negatively impact your air quality). Perhaps look into upholstery and the chemicals that sofas and beds are treated with (admittedly, buying all-natural alternatives is far more expensive and won’t be an option for many).
Also, we can try to buy fewer mass-produced items that are made cheaply using poor-quality materials. Instead, invest in handmade pieces if you can. You might need to save up or buy less, but they’ll last far longer and the beauty of an object or piece of furniture made well by a craftsperson will speak for itself. You’ll get far more joy from it.
Period pastiche
It’s the right time to embrace authenticity and enhance a home in creative ways that feel appropriate for the style of the building. Faux-period features are better left in the past – you can be expressive and add character to a modern home without involving Grecian columns or ‘rustic’ beams glued to the ceilings of a new build. That is unless the near-faithful recreation of a Tudor cottage inside a 1930s semi sparks joy and you don’t care whether it looks Disneyland-esque, in which case, wattle and daub the night away with pleasure!
