30 interior design tricks you need to know
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These tips and tricks are in no particular order– I wrote them as I thought of them –but they WILL make your home better either by righting the wrongs you didn’t know were bugging you, improving the flow, creating a proper red thread, or elevating the affordable to aspirational. Keep this list by you at all times when you’re decorating and renovating.
1. EMBELLISH READY-MADE CURTAINS
Honestly, these days ready-mades are so good I don’t know why you would spend hundreds (even thousands) on bespoke. I mean, yes, if it’s for a grand drawing room and your pinch pleats must be “just so”. But for everything else there’s passementerie - which is a fancy way of saying trims such as pompoms, fringes and tassels.
Buy a set of ready-made linen curtains from wherever you like: Secret Linen Store is good, La Redoute do extra long, H&M and Zara both have lots of colours. Sew the embellishment of your choice along the sides. Done.
If you want to really improve them and you have a sewing machine, cut off the tabs at the top (do it carefully and you probably won’t even have to hem) and buy some ruffle tape that you can sew along the edge. Gather to fit, and add hooks. You can now hang this from your curtain pole and it will draw much more easily than fabric tabs on wooden poles. I did this in my sitting room with curtains from Secret Linen Store in Conker.
2. MAKE A RUG FROM A LARGE PIECE OF CARPET
This is a no-brainer to save money. Rugs are expensive. Big rugs are really expensive –although a tip: La Redoute is good and they often have sales. Otherwise, buy a piece of carpet in the size you need and get the shop to hem/whip/bind the edges for you. If you choose a plain carpet then hem in a contrast or toning colour rather than matching.
Buy as big as you can afford, leaving about 30cm of floor all the way round, but making sure you can open any doors over the top. Failing that, buy big enough to create a zone in a large room, which means that at least the front legs of the furniture must sit on it.
3. USE AN OLD BED TO CREATE A NEW ONE
We wanted large antique headboards for the house in Italy, but the problem is that modern double beds tend to be wider than old ones. Also, no-one tends to want old single beds. So we bought a pair of vintage single bed frames on eBay. We fixed the headboards of both side by side to the wall in our bedroom, and put the bed in front. Bingo – one large headboard. We then mounted the two footboards in the same way in another bedroom. Finally, we fixed one of the wooden side panels above each, to create a little more grandeur and make it look like the two single-width head/footboards belonged together. Two vintage headboards created for around £100 and an afternoon’s labour.
Below are the two footboards fixed to the wall with the side panel along the top for a slight flourish. In our bedroom we used the headboards which were taller and didn’t need the batons below to raise them.
4. YOUR LOCAL MUSEUM SHOP IS A GOLDMINE
I am lucky enough to live in London where the museums and galleries, and their shops, are amazing but they all also sell online so you can shop from them too wherever you live. Buy a set of postcards or a tea towel and frame them/it to create an affordable piece of modern art for your wall.
5. MAKE CURTAINS WITHOUT SEWING
This works really well for café curtains, which are great for privacy without cutting the light. Basically it’s those curtains that begin halfway down a window – and they’re easy to make without having to thread a needle or use a sewing machine. You will need an iron though. Cut the fabric to size, fold over the edges twice so you are tucking in any fraying edge. Iron flat. Insert hemming tape and iron again so the fold sticks down. You now have a hemmed and tidy piece of fabric. Buy some curtain rings with clips and thread onto curtain pole. Clip curtain to rings. Done. If you don’t want to use the curtain clips you can create a wider fold at the top so that when you hem it down you can thread the pole through the channel that remains.
Below are the café curtains I made using leftover linen from another project. These are actually sewn – I hemmed three sides and created a wider “hem” at the top which I left open at the sides so I could thread a brass rod through. It works here for privacy as I never need to open them.
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