Tips for Celebrating your Home

There has never been more interest in visualising our homes as individual expressions of ourselves and striving to create the home we want to invite others into. But not all of us have an intimate knowledge of colour, line, shape, texture, perspective and other elements of design involved with interior decorating. High-flying interior stylist and curator of Collected, LeeAnn Yare, shares with us her tips for celebrating every space in your home, in her must-have book, Rooms to Love.

Welcome

The entrance to your home should be like putting on your best dress; it’s the first glimpse of the interior within. Create some wow factor. As an alternative to going colour-crazy on the wall surfaces, look for other features, such as doors, skirting boards, console tables and other decorative items. Even the least DIY-skilled person can easily arm themselves with a tin of paint and a brush, or a spray can.

Live

One of my mottos with any room, and even more importantly in the living areas, which are the most highly frequented rooms, is “change, change and change”. Don’t be scared to move things around – try orientating your furniture in different ways, perhaps facing the fire in winter or the deck in summer; take down all your art and start afresh; clear your bookshelf and sideboard and restyle and rotate your cushions. And don’t forget flowers – even if it’s a cutting of greenery from your garden or kerbside in a collection of recycled jars, they are always the finishing touch to every room.

Photography by Larnie Nicolson