Room by Room
The hallway is doing more work than any other room
It is the space every visitor sees first, that everybody passes through daily, and that almost nobody designs.
Rooms With Stories — Interiors that were lived in first
Room by Room
A kitchen is a workflow before it is a look
Most kitchen regret is about distances and surfaces, not about finishes. The layout decisions are the ones you live with.
Materials
Materials that age well and materials that only look new
Everything in a house is on a trajectory. Choosing well means choosing what you want it to look like in ten years.
Room by Room
All room by room →Room by Room
A kitchen is a workflow before it is a look
Most kitchen regret is about distances and surfaces, not about finishes. The layout decisions are the ones you live with.
Room by Room
The hallway is doing more work than any other room
It is the space every visitor sees first, that everybody passes through daily, and that almost nobody designs.
Room by Room
Bedrooms are lit for cleaning and used for sleeping
The overhead fitting in most bedrooms is the brightest thing in the room at the moment you least want brightness.
Materials
All materials →Materials
Materials that age well and materials that only look new
Everything in a house is on a trajectory. Choosing well means choosing what you want it to look like in ten years.
Materials
Paint finish matters more than paint colour
The same colour in three finishes produces three different rooms. Almost all paint disappointment is a sheen problem.
Materials
Grout is the weak point in every tiled surface
Tiles do not usually fail. The joints between them, and what is behind them, do.
Light
All light →
Light
Most room problems are lighting problems
A room that feels wrong and cannot be diagnosed is almost always lit from one place, at one colour, at one level.
Light
North-facing rooms are not a problem to be corrected
Trying to make a cool room feel warm with paint usually fails. Working with the light produces better rooms.
Light
Lumens, kelvin and CRI: the three numbers that decide a bulb
Watts stopped meaning brightness years ago. The figures on the box now describe three separate things, and mixing them up is why…
Small Spaces
All small spaces →
Small Spaces
A small flat needs fewer things, better placed
Most small-space advice sells storage. The rooms that work usually contain less, arranged around how the space is used.
Small Spaces
Renting well is a set of reversible decisions
You cannot change the building. You can change almost everything you experience of it, and take it with you.
Small Spaces
A studio flat needs zones, not dividers
Chopping one room into smaller rooms usually makes it worse. Marking what happens where makes it work.
Renovation
All renovation →
Renovation
Renovation sequencing is where budgets are actually lost
Doing the right work in the wrong order means paying for some of it twice. That is the most common renovation failure.
Renovation
Damp has three common causes and they need different fixes
Treating condensation as rising damp is expensive and ineffective. Diagnosis has to come first.
Renovation
Reading a builder's quote is a skill worth learning before you need it
Two quotes for the same job can differ enormously and both be honest, because they are pricing different things.
Objects & Craft
All objects & craft →
Objects & Craft
Buy furniture slowly, and leave the gaps
Rooms furnished in one purchase read as showrooms. The good ones accumulate, and the gaps are part of it.
Objects & Craft
Repair is cheaper than replacement and almost nobody does it
Most household objects fail in a small number of predictable ways, and most of those are fixable with basic tools.
Objects & Craft
A mattress is a support system and it has a shorter life than the bed
Comfort is personal, but the things that determine how long a mattress lasts are not, and they are rarely on the label.
From the archive
- Paint finish matters more than paint colourMaterials
- Most room problems are lighting problemsLight
- North-facing rooms are not a problem to be correctedLight
- A small flat needs fewer things, better placedSmall Spaces
- Renting well is a set of reversible decisionsSmall Spaces
- Renovation sequencing is where budgets are actually lostRenovation
- Damp has three common causes and they need different fixesRenovation
- Buy furniture slowly, and leave the gapsObjects & Craft