Home decorator Lara Winter is one of Ideal Home's Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on revamping a 200 year old cottage to make it right for modern family life. See the rest of her articles here.
There was definitely a time when I thought a beautiful home was one where you couldn’t really tell anyone lived there. Before taking a photo I’d remove the post, hide the toys, clear the fridge and generally erase all evidence that four actual humans lived in our house. Which, when you think about it, is a bit ridiculous.
These days I’m much more interested in homes that tell you something about the people living in them. And rather than just accepting family life as something that gets in the way of decorating, I’ve started designing around it. Not all of it, obviously. Nobody needs to see the contents of our junk drawer.
Treat kids’ art like proper art
One of my favourite pieces in our entire house is a huge cowgirl painting my five-year-old painted. It hangs above the antique bureau in my office that belonged to my great-grandmother. Does it technically “go”? Who cares. I love it.
I think we’re too quick to stick children’s artwork on the fridge while spending money on prints made by people we’ve never met. Pick the pieces you genuinely love, frame them properly and hang them somewhere prominent. Suddenly it stops looking like something brought home from school and starts looking like art. Because it is.
Make your storage work for the family you actually have
We have a lovely Transformer Table in our dining nook with hidden storage on both sides. What would you expect to find inside? Napkins, placemats, perhaps some nice glasses. What do we keep in ours? Pens (approximately half without lids), pencils, activity books, scissors and glue. It is absolutely rammed. The storage drawers underneath the DIY banquette next to it aren’t any more sophisticated. More craft supplies.
And actually, that’s exactly why I love both pieces so much. Good family storage doesn’t mean finding somewhere upstairs to hide all the children’s things. Sometimes it means keeping them exactly where you use them – just behind a nice-looking door. Our boys can sit down at the table and draw without anyone fetching a box from another room, then everything gets swept back into the drawers afterwards. In theory, anyway.
Put things where you actually use them
I think there’s a temptation to design family rooms for the moments when they’re tidy rather than the way they’re used for the other 95% of the week. If your children always draw at the dining table, store the craft supplies there. If everyone dumps shoes by one particular door, put the shoe storage there. If toys constantly migrate into the living room, give them a basket in the living room.
Stop fighting where your family naturally puts things and start designing around it. It’s much easier than spending the next ten years asking, “Why is this HERE?”.
Stop worrying about whether sentimental things match
Our kitchen contains a monk-shaped salt shaker that belonged to my grandparents and a wooden duck chopping board that belonged to my late dad. Neither featured on the mood board, but I’d choose them over a perfectly coordinated accessory every time.
Inherited pieces don’t need to match your decorating style. Mix them in with newer things and let them be a little odd. An old jug can hold utensils, plates can go on walls and random ornaments can sit on bookshelves. A home full of things that perfectly coordinate is lovely. A home full of things with stories is better.
Let somewhere be messy
Our fridge is covered in drawings, photographs, certificates and whatever else has been deemed fridge-worthy that week. Would my kitchen look calmer without it? Yes. Do I care? Increasingly, no.
You don’t have to let family life take over every surface. Give it somewhere to live: a fridge, pinboard, magnetic wall or noticeboard, and embrace that one area being gloriously imperfect.
Social media has made us very good at looking at our homes as pictures and noticing the cable, the toy or the thing that doesn’t match. But the homes I remember aren’t usually the perfect ones. They’re the ones where you walk in and immediately know who lives there.
And I’d much rather have that than a perfectly styled fridge.
