House Notes #5
My monthly newsletter – with design tips and new products, personal news, interviews, books and recipes. Subscribe so you never miss it.
HOUSEKEEPING: My month this month
Well it’s been a tumultuous month, hasn’t it? I’ve been trying (and failing) to stay away from social media (at least from the most toXic of sites) and busying myself with writing and pottering around at home.
In the most domestic of news I cleared up the area around my desk. I don’t have an office, but use the back half of the sitting room, so I have to make a real effort to keep it tidy. I managed to throw away a pleasing amount of stuff and also rediscovered a diary written by my paternal grandmother between 1940 and 1945. I suspect she had dreams of publishing it, but while it doesn’t contain any earth-shattering or dramatic events in relation to the world stage, it’s fascinating to read about my father (Michael, who was born in 1934) and his sister (Jenny, born in 1939) growing up near Manchester as my grandmother tried to carry on as normal (although “normal” is relative, as she is fretting about no longer having a maid at one point!)
On 2 February 1943 she wrote:
“The grocer gave me a tin of pears today, a thing we haven’t seen for month and months, perhaps even a year. With the top of the milk bottle they had them for tea. Michael said: ‘This must be a dream,’ and Jenny looked at hers and said: ‘Is it after the War?’”
Now for Design Retreat news. I have already taken a number of bookings for September and October 2025 so if you are interested you need to let me know. Give yourselves something to look forward to – I feel like we need it. All the details are here and I will ask only for a 25% deposit to confirm your place, with the other payments due three months and one month before the event, so you have plenty of time to spread it out into chunks.
I was thrilled this month to be featured in the Christmas edition of Homes & Gardens magazine, which ran a feature on the colour red and included my kitchen in Italy. Long-standing readers will remember I wrote my response to the ‘unexpected red theory’ here and I suspect this feature (which included things that were much redder than the stripe of my curtain) was a festive take on the quantity of red we are seeing in interiors at the moment.
I have also been asked twice by other titles for my opinion on lavender and lilac, so get ready because those shades are coming next. I particularly love them with cream and olive green, but actually they like all shades of green from emerald to sage – and if you are feeling daring, they look lovely with a bit of chocolate.
I have posted my gift guide (along with everyone else) but have focused more on HOW to buy rather than WHAT in the hope that you might find that more useful. In the meantime, I have a couple of lovely things to share here, in case you are looking for small ideas.
This soap dish from Sharland England is handmade in Italy and would be the most perfect present with a bar of soap from Annings of Dorset. And the twisted candles by Yod&Co are all hand-poured and come in a range of colours.
MY INTERIOR LIFE: Lucy Williams
This month’s guest is Lucy Williams, a fashion content creator whose house was the most-viewed on House & Garden when she shared it two years ago. She has since gone on to help others with their interior design projects and I particularly loved her recent piece on the perils of the “too perfect” room, which chimed with my own post on why the pursuit of perfectionism is ruining your home – which I have unlocked for you for one week only.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Lucy and I live in West London with my husband and our dog Finn. I grew up in rural Shropshire on a potato farm and had a very outdoorsy, muddy-boots and climbing trees childhood. I moved to London after graduating university and have been here for 15 years now. I wanted to work in fashion (I think I just really liked shopping, to be honest!) and got my first job at Sheerluxe and then a monthly fashion glossy before going into trend forecasting for several years. I was the weirdo that had a blog in the early 2010s and by 2015 I was working on my blog and Instagram full-time, collaborating with brands like Levi’s, Chanel and Missoma.
After buying and renovating our home in 2020 and documenting all of it on a dedicated Instagram account, interiors are now part of my job, too, which has been amazing. I rediscovered a scrapbook at my parents’ house from when I was about 11 or 12 with drawings of pelmets and headboards (very 90s!) trying to design my ‘dream bedroom’, so I guess this has been a bit of a surprise full-circle moment! As well as sharing my own home updates, I write about interiors on Substack, style and curate for brands, contribute to House & Garden online and I just designed a collection of candlesticks and sconces with British ceramics brand Feldspar. Fingers in lots of proverbial pies, essentially!
And your top design tip?
TheSaleroom.com for auctions and online house sales, and sourcing fabric from the local vendors on the Goldhawk Road in West London. You can get fantastic tickings, needlecord and washed linen for under £20 a metre.
What would you rush to save from your burning house?
I know it’s cheesy, but as long as I had my husband and my dog safe and sound I’d be happy – but if I had time to grab some of the vintage art and ceramics I’ve collected, even better.
What’s your (current) favourite Instagram account?
I’m one of those people whose idea of great time is browsing Rightmove just for fun. Craig Fuller Property Search for English country-house porn, and A House Upstate for upstate New York house porn are two current favourites. I also adore every single home and inspiration on Zach Stamatis’ posts.
If I gave you £150, what would you buy?
I’d go vintage shopping for some kind of unique trinket. I love these vintage 1950s soap dishes, via Abask, for example.
What’s your favourite style of furniture/decor?
I’m always drawn to anything folky – from chunky brutalist furniture to more delicate Gustavian style pieces. I love Arts & Crafts pieces, and I think that has a folky, homespun feeling to it, too. I don’t think there’s a room a Sussex chair wouldn’t look great in.
Tell us your most visited interiors websites/stores?
Decorative Collective and Vinterior for browsing antiques and vintage. Iota Edit for original, unique finds.
What’s the best thing you ever bought?
I have a painting in our sitting room I bought from a car boot sale for £50 and it remains one of my favourite pieces. I’ve also never regretted an epic light fitting. I have a big parchment globe light from Pinch London that I still love as much as the day I bought it and some Rose Uniacke plaster shell uplighters I’ll keep forever too.
What’s your cocktail of choice?
I’m a bit boring with cocktails and always just love a great gin and tonic, or maybe a spicy marg.
What’s the soundtrack to your favourite room?
Our TV room/snug is entirely blue from top to bottom with floor to ceiling bookshelves and a log fire. It’s cosy on cosy and is my favourite place to relax and curl up. I think the soundtrack would have to be something comforting and upbeat, like Natalie Cole’s ‘This Will Be An Everlasting Love’, or maybe some iconic movie theme tunes by John Williams.
Confess – what’s your screen-time total so far this week?
I average 4.30 hrs on my phone a day – and I daren’t add laptop and TV to the mix!
What do you wish you had designed, or could own?
What I’d do to own a huge painting by Billy Childish or Andrew Cranston… I also saw the most incredible original Alvar Aalto bentwood hallway chair recently and fell in love.
On a smaller, maybe slightly more achievable scale, I dream of having a Bjorn Wiinblad carousel horse ceramic candelabra on my dining table.
What’s one thing you do for your mental well-being?
Getting outside for a walk with my dog everyday.
What’s the ugly thing in your house that you can’t bring yourself to throw away?
I have far too many cushions on our sofa at this point and a lot of cosy and decidedly un-chic blankets for curling up under while watching TV. I personally think a home needs some ugly or ‘bad taste’ bits to make it great. Too much good taste is boring!
Plan B. If this wasn’t your job what would you be doing?
In another life I’d have loved to work in animal conservation or with therapy animals.
DESIGN DISCOVERY… Sézane
Everyone raves about Sézane for clothes, but I like the homewares. I’m grateful to a former attendee of the Design Retreats who alerted me to Les Composantes, a rather fabulous collection of lamps.
TRADE SECRET: Mixing metals
This is something I am often asked about. The basic rule of thumb is that you can mix two in a room without causing a clash. My guide is to try and match the architectural features throughout the whole house – so that’s door handles and hinges, sockets and switches. If you can include window furniture, that’s good, but it’s not always possible. Otherwise if you can keep the architectural ones consistent you can add a second metal for things like taps and ovens and fridges etc, and that can vary from room to room.
My house has bronze light switches, door handles and plug sockets throughout.
The bathroom has chrome fittings, and the bronze light switch is outside the door so there’s only one metal in there.
The windows all have brass latches, but that goes with the bronze in the rooms where there are two.
The sitting room has no overhead light (so no switch), the sockets are bronze, as are the door handles, the radiators and fireplaces. That was how we came to choose bronze in the first place.
So technically I have three finishes overall, but I have tried to create consistency within the house and there are never more than two in each room. My kitchen tap is black, which tones with the bronze handles.
The key is to combine your metals in a way that pleases you. I have used bronze with all the others – chrome, brass, black and copper. I’m less keen on chrome and brass as a combo and I don’t like brass and copper. If I had a large budget I would choose polished nickel over chrome as it’s slightly warmer and does get along better with brass.
Upgrade to paid to find out what I’m wearing, watching, reading and wanting – this is a new lifestyle section. I have never written about lifestyle before as I have tended to stay firmly in my interiors lane. However, within the confines of a subscriber community it feels safer to do so and you never know – you might share my tastes or discover some new things. Coming in?