Homes that feel as good as they look

I think this might be one of my favourite moments of the year. The trees are still green, there are flowers in the garden and, on a good day, there’s still enough warmth in the sun to sit outside. But something has definitely shifted and whilst I’m not quite ready for autumn yet I am enjoying the slow transition. The light is gentler and the warmth softer. August can become so dry and heavy; all the foliage reaches its deepest green and by the end of the month everything can

There’s a little moment at the beginning of September when the summer holidays and the new school term converge. After weeks of lazy mornings, not knowing what day of the week it is, it's back to alarm clocks, school bags, uniforms and strict schedules. Often the term starts with a couple of days and then almost immediately it's the weekend again, which is actually quite a clever idea, a sort of soft launch back into real life rather than going from zero to five in one hit. S

I’ve just come back from my sister’s wedding in Italy, and somewhere between the ceremony, the dancing and rather a lot of very late nights, I started thinking about old and new. Weddings are rather wonderful examples of the two coming together. Small children running around, grandparents, young adults just starting out in life, couples beginning families, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, 80-year-olds dancing with 20-year-olds. The people who have known you all your lif

I have spent most of my working life looking at homes through the lens of a camera. Styling rooms, moving things around, finding the right angle, waiting for the light to change. After all these years, I know that a photograph can give you a snapshot of a room, but of course, that’s not the whole storyA photograph is the ultimate edit. You choose what goes into the frame and, just as importantly, what stays outside it. Very often a few inches to one side there’s a pile of dis

We’re heading into the second half of August and I can already feel everything begin to shift. Partly because of the decided lack of rain we've had, all the stressed trees are already turning yellow and shedding their leaves here, but also because there is a shift in August... the light is lower, you start to notice the evenings drawing in and here on the marsh we get the return of the heavy morning dews. September is definitely on the mind. There are people on Instagram talk

The Rituals of Home This week I had a fascinating conversation with someone who was staying at our holiday cottage. We were talking about the importance of human connection and he used a phrase I hadn’t heard before (at least not in the way he meant it) “social hygiene”. Much like sleep hygiene, he explained, it’s about the rituals and good practices that support our social health. Spending time face to face, eating together, talking, laughing, sharing experiences. Things t

One of the most useful decorating tools I’ve ever used isn’t a paint chart or a tape measure. It’s a camera. That might sound strange coming from someone who’s spent the last thirty-five years styling and designing homes, but as they say a camera never lies and it highlights things we’ve stopped noticing.The camera has no emotional attachment to the extra chair that was placed as a temporary measure and that you’ve been re-routing around for years but that has somehow become

Instagram has been full this week of gardeners sharing advice on how to help plants survive another hot summer. Hosepipe bans, drought-tolerant planting and gardens under stress seem to be everywhere I look. When we talk about creating a calmer life, we rarely talk about the garden, but I think we should. Our gardens can either become another long list of jobs demanding our attention, or they can become places of respite and rejuvenation. A few years ago, Dave and I took a hu

It's July, and everyone is home. The dishwasher seems to be on a permanent cycle. Dirty cups appear in the sitting room faster than I can carry them back to the kitchen, only to mysteriously reappear a few hours later. There are coats slung over the backs of chairs, shoes abandoned in the hall, and creative projects spreading themselves across the kitchen table. (That bit, I rather love.) and my own bedroom is probably the untidiest room in the house because by the time I've

I’ve just come back from a week in Greece, and one of the things holidays always remind me is how differently we experience the world when we’re truly present. For a few precious days I focussed on spending my time with loved ones, slowing down and my senses seemed to wake up. I noticed the rhythmic, ever present chorus of cicadas rising and falling with the afternoon heat, the gentle lap of the sea against the rocks below our villa and that delicious sensation of a warm bree