Ten home fashion tips for the unfashionable
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3499286.stm
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1. Wallpaper is back. So too is patterned fabric. Designers have tired of white walls and pared-down minimalism, and instead embraced romantic patterns and textures.
2. While the chintz remains chucked, only the hardy persist in aping a New York loft apartment aesthetic. Now we dream of open-plan, comfy, cosy spaces that spill from lounge into kitchen and out to a landscaped garden for al fresco feasts. The much-heralded M&S Lifestores aim to sell this combination of flair and comfort to Middle England.
3. The kitchen is no longer a utility room - it is to be eaten in, enjoyed, put on display. Sales of appliances and kitchen furniture are booming - the market is worth £977m - with equipment once only seen in top restaurants in demand. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is among the home-owners to have spent an exorbitant sum on a new kitchen, including £67,000 on a free-standing cooker alone.
4. Colours inspired by food and drink look particularly tasty this year, with aubergine, wine red, chocolate, and a whole harvest basket of greens to choose from.
5. In the smallest room in the house, bigger is most definitely better. For what's the point in installing a saucepan lid-sized shower head and statement bathtub if there's no room left for that colour co-ordinated towel collection?
6. Just as TV makeover programmes have launched thousands of DIY decorators, high-end property (Channel 4's Grand Designs, oooooh) has fired our enthusiasm for cutting edge, tailor-made homes. Each year some 15,000 self-build projects get underway - some estimates put that figure as high as 25,000.
7. Eco-chic is where it's at. Build from sustainable - or recycled - materials. Incorporate high-spec insulation and smart ventilation and heating. And when it comes to finishing touches, rubbish has risen phoenix-like from the recycling plant, with tiles made from ketchup bottles, lampshades from kitchen steamers and planters from tyres.
8. Retro has never gone out of fashion - it's just a matter of which decade is hippest to reference. Once it was de rigueur to collect art deco items, or to stock up on elegant Danish classics from the 1960s. Today it's a mix of old with new - chandeliers with plywood portraits, vintage four-posters with reupholstered junk shop chairs.
9. Craft is the new fine art. A ceramicist, Grayson Perry, won the Turner Prize. Jake and Dinos Chapman were nominated for a series of carved wooden figurines, which at first glance appeared ancient and at second turned out to be clutching McDonald's fries and shakes. And when Arts Minister Estelle Morris moved into her new office, she chose crafts over artworks by YBAs.
10. Wishful thinking... an end of an era for wooden floors (laminates look too plasticy; the real deal too chilly and too noisy underfoot) and the ubiquitous leather sofa. Their heyday has surely come and gone.
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