Spring is on its way and about blooming time too! (Did you see what I did there?) In preparation for sunnier days, we have been talking with tv personality and interior design guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. He say’s interior design is changing with the season, here’s what else he said to the StyleAble team…
Now Spring is here and the world of interior design has moved on, what should we all do to keep up?
“At the moment it’s all about the excitement of fashionability in interior decorating. I think that’s lovely; it shows that as a nation we’ve become much more confident as interior decorators. You know, we are all wanting to bring a sense of that gorgeous British ‘outdooriness’ into our homes to celebrate the fact that the days are getting longer, the weather is getting sunnier, the floods are receding – finally! I was on the verge of actually growing my own rice at one point!”
Sounds like fun! So, what”s trending?
“There’s a real feeling of the year having moved on now; let’s indulge ourselves in bright, light optimistic decorating. One of the things I find very interesting is that technology is looking much more retro. And as an interior designer, I really like that. I really like the fact that everything from a light switch to a digital radio now looks good in one of my interiors, rather than my interiors having to live up to these big black lumps of technology that we had a few years ago.”
Retro is the word on everyone’s lips and has been for a while, why do we love it so much?
“I think that actually as a nation we are using retro in a very intelligent way. We are not doing it to run away from the future, we are actually taking the past with us into the present and then into the future. And I think that is an important distinction – interiors a few years ago were very introspective. And I loved that, I think people found the outside world a scary place, a very challenging place so they wanted their interiors to be a real sensual overload that allowed them to forget about the drudgery of day to day living. But I think now it’s like someone has opened the curtain. Someone’s opened the windows and there is a fresh breeze blowing in. It’s much less dark, things are much less cocooning, things now are much more engaging, much more confident, much more hopeful.”
I always feel like getting the right lighting in your home is key to getting the perfect look and feel, any tips?
“One of the most efficient things you can ever do with the amount of light that comes into any room, is to clean your windows! It was something I didn’t realise until quite recently! But actually it’s really straightforward. You can increase the amount of light coming into a room by about 30 per cent when you have your windows cleaned… which is just crazy. There’s a sense that the nation is about to start on one giant spring clean and get ready for a very exciting year…”
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is one of the celebrity ambassadors for this year’s Ideal Home Show from 14th – 30th March at Earl’s Court, London. Tickets available from: www.idealhomeshow.co.uk.