"Wales, take back your homes!" proclaims interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. But he doesn't mean change the locks and don't let anyone else in. He is championing the notion that people should have the confidence to make their homes a reflection of their personality and as colourful as themselves.
Spend a wet Welsh weekend chatting to your tat says TV's design master, also fondly known as LLB, and your home will thank you for it. In a world where waves of grey and neutrals are submerging the creativity of interiors throughout homes in Wales the décor guru is flying the flag for flooding homes instead with jewel and gem colours, sumptuous fabrics, and beautifully-designed patterns – fully diving into the maximalist style.
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Laurence has just come out of a successful second series of Channel 4's Changing Rooms where in true LLB style the grand finale saw him indulge in the strong boudoir reds that he became known for the first time around in the 1990s BBC programme. This time around nothing has changed with the owner rushing to the nearest DIY shop to get a pot of neutral paint after filming had stopped. But don't judge LLB on his often-flamboyant TV designs – just a glance at the online portfolio of gorgeous room makeovers from his studio Laurence-Bowen design in the real world illustrates his visual versatility in creating delicious designs, from blue hues to raging oranges.
But anyone who knows anything about one of the UK's most recognisable interior designers can tell you he is as layered in his creativity, ideas, and extensive knowledge as one of his stunning and sumptuous interior design schemes and this is evident in his new book More More More which shows you how to create a home that is more about you and your tat than 'must-haves' and trends.
Laurence said: "What is so much more interesting than the latest modern style is when objects have personality and stories to tell – giving you permission to display granny's 'whatnot' and Auntie Fanny's vase and that thing you saw on an online auction or in a junk shop that cost a couple of quid – it is about price tag-less and consumer-less decorating."
LLB's take on modern maximalism is that the personality of the object reflects your personality rather than something you're using to show off or using it to entice the estate agent to tell you your Welsh terrace house is worth a few grand more. He said: "It's an incredible fruitless way to live. If you're going to constrain your life and everything that you do in the vague hope that you might make £5k when you come to sell your home in five years then you're really not doing your home properly. When you come to sell it you can paint it then in some ghastly shade of cream.
"Sure, your home is your biggest financial investment but it's also your biggest emotional investment. It is the background to your kids, it's the background to their weddings, the background to funerals, christenings – all the really important stuff that makes you who you are."
Laurence is clear in his vision to help you develop your individual style and your unique home – he will always advocate for you to channel your inner 'Auntie Rita' style as a path to maximalist bliss. He says: "Your Auntie Rita... she's that aunty that turned up at parties with too much French perfume on and was the one that started the dancing and got everything going. She was the one with the home that was an absolute shrine to maximalism – pattern, flowers, tassels on the lampshades, paintings of dusky maidens, bizarre lamp bases.
"The family would say: 'Oh Rita goes too far, she's too common, too ghastly'. But Rita was fun, she knew how it worked – she had a passionate, romantic dignity to the fact that she wasn't going to fit the grey mould. She was going to be naughty, glamorous, and incredibly attractive – we were all drawn to Auntie Rita.
"I grew up with so many Welsh Auntie Ritas – most of my aunties were Auntie Ritas and I probably am channelling them in my Changing Room schemes. I've never done so much erecting on TV as I have done on this most recent series of Changing Rooms – everything has got bigger and bigger and scarier and slightly more difficult to get your head around. It also proves that I don't learn lessons on the reds and boudoirs – but you all want it."
Laurence, and his trademark leather trousers and statement pattern shirts, first gained attention in the groundbreaking show Changing Rooms which aired on BBC in 1996 and ran for eight years. Since then LLB has grown his interiors empire that includes a practice in Cirencester and regularly designing ranges of home products and wallpaper for well-known brands.
He also regularly appears on interior design shows across the world including appearing in 120m homes as a judge on The Apartment, Style Edition for Fox Asia. In 2021 Changing Rooms returned, this time to Channel 4, and the leather trousers and lavish designs came back to the nation's TV screens.
Laurence's new book rides on the crest of a maximalism wave that is currently flooding the interiors world, creating unique homes across the land, some of which are likely to be featured in Laurence's new and up-coming Channel 4 show Outrageous Homes with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Laurence thinks there are two main reasons why maximalism has become so popular "very quickly and very powerfully" and one of them can be laid at the front doors of millennials. He said: "They very quickly twigged that the way we were decorating wasn't fun and took to social media to show how interiors could be a lot more exciting. And maybe they won't own their own homes for years so they can't knock through walls or add bi-fold doors but what they can do is use colour and patterns and objects to define their space and they do that so well."
Of course with the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns forcing everyone to stay inside their homes and filling the hours by scrolling through social media the population was bombarded with ideas on how to make their homes as individual as they are. So maximalism has blossomed and LLB wants you to get on with weeding out the rubbish and nurture and grow the colour, patterns, and individual personality at your home. Laurence is demanding it's time to embrace your tat.
He said: "We are defined by the things we own – for years we have called that clutter. We've been bullied for at least 20 years that the tat has to go in the under stairs cupboard, which is wrong. I feel very strongly: own what you love and love what you own. If you've got it flaunt it."
But don't be confused into thinking maximalism is all about filling your home to bursting point with stuff – that's not it at all. Laurence said: "If you're hiding it in the garage then get rid of it or otherwise you end up with irritable bowel syndrome in your storage, which is very unpleasant.
"And you have to know the difference between maximalism and becoming that cat lady person where absolutely everything is left out The point of maximalism is that it needs to be curated.
"Have a chat with your tat. Ask it: 'Do I really like you? What do you do for me? Why are you there? Are you there for a reason?' If the answer is no then get rid of it – it's as simple as that. And it's one of the most fabulous ways to spend a wet weekend, having a chatter with your tat sorting out the right from the sh**e."
LLB's new book can help you navigate away from the danger of journeying towards cat lady to instead arrive at the destination of curated loveliness. He said: "The book is not a style file, it's not a prescriptive way of doing it, but what it does do is show you why and how maximalism works.
"I want you to see this book as a safe place. A place where what John Betjeman called ‘ghastly good taste’ finds no succour. There's no judgement and no awkwardness about trends, fashions, or fads. Instead a gorgeous, glorious celebration of the known world's most magnificent, munificent design philosophy – maximalism."
The book includes a lot of information on curation, using pattern, breaking down what colours to use and how to arrange them. There's also guidance on room balance and object placement, be it symmetrical or asymmetrical, as there are design principles to help you create a visual feast and not a jumble sale.
Laurence added: "This book will not only show you how to adopt maximalism in your home but also how to change your mindset on living happily within it. There are no rules, no scientific solution. Instead it’s all about giving you the confidence to curate your own perfect haven of chaos, so you can live and love your stuff in surroundings that are anything but beige. It's time to make the old minimalist ‘designosaurs’ extinct and inspire the new generation of homeowners and renters who want to rebel against the mass-market principles of less is more."
And Laurence thinks Welsh homes are the perfect canvas to paint your own individual take on maximalism thanks to our wonderful climate. He said: "We are faced in Wales with some of the most unfriendly grey weather on the planet, so Welsh houses always tend to be quite cocooning and that's a real positive.
"The traditional Valleys house was all about keeping in warmth, being dry, and loved and safe, and these are super-big T-shirt slogans for the way we should be living from now on. Before Covid our grey-atoriums were just places we returned to as we lived our lives but now we are spending more time in them, and even working in them, we are realising they are not the reflection of our personality that they should be. Maximalism makes your room look warm from the outset rather than the scary white or grey boxes that people are trying to achieve – they are as cold as a witch's t*t!
And one of the battles that LLB wants to tackle is the current tidal wave of grey as the go-to colour for your house. He said: "I'm a big fan of grey as a background, just not into grey being a thing on every single surface so it's like a 1980s building society. It doesn't make your house look bigger – it makes your house look greyer."
But in his quest to bring colour to the greyness, and pattern to the boring, Laurence might have to take on his potential nemesis – or at least get more viewing figures to try and beat him – in the shape of Kevin McCloud and his Channel 4 programme Grand Designs, which some might argue regularly features white and grey boxes and abundant minimalism.
The irony of minimalist-led Grand Designs being programmed on Channel 4 directly after maximalist-driven Changing Rooms is not lost on Laurence. He mused: "Isn't that weird, watching me and then Kevin McCloud? It's like King Charles II and then Oliver Cromwell – it's bizarre."
Wales can claim part of shaping LLB's love of the traditional design classics from a young age after many holidays roaming around the magnificent castles that pepper our landscape. He said: "My love of history so early came from going around Edwardian castles in Wales designed to keep us in our place and what that did was to become the basis of my love of history.
"After almost 60 years it has given me the ability to look back historically and this book is all about the way current living was created in the modernist era by people like Bauhaus. You would not want to have them at your dinner party, or know them, because they were genuinely very controlling of the vision of how people should live and that vision was unfriendly to a traditional home which was centred around this beautiful human being – the mam.
"We need to go back to a place in the past where homes were where the heart was, where the Welsh mam was. She was the one creating the big pot of stock in the kitchen that kept the house warm, she was the one who motivated the whole homely thing."
One of the core reasons Laurence is fully embracing of, and strongly promotes, maximalism is that he believes it has women at the centre. He said: "Women define the home now in the way they weren't allowed to in the modernist home of the past and I love that."
Of course LLB advocates for your home to be exactly how you want it to be. And if minimalism is what you yearn for then go for it – LLB is with you all the way regarding his desire for people to surround themselves with an interior that they love. However he doesn't think it suits the majority of Welsh homes or his mantra that your home should cocoon you, make you feel safe and warm – surely a white box just doesn't give off that vibe?
More More More by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is published by DK, hardback for sale for £20.00, more details here.
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