All posts tagged: natural materials

Cork is for life, not just for coasters

Published by Karen Knox

Hello hello, how are you all this week? I have a couple of public announcements to make before I get stuck into this week’s blog post, so please bear with me… 1. Sorry for missing last week’s post everyone. I had the lurgi and tonsillitis so I spent most of last week moaning and watching Netflix. I’m just about back on it now, so i’ve got a lot of catching up to do! 2. THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH! To those that voted for me in this year’s Amara Interior Blog Awards, you did it. You got me shortlisted for Best Interior Designer Blog, so i’m off to the awards ceremony later this month. Eeeek! I can’t tell you how happy I was. Thank you so much once again! You guys are total legends 🙂 So onto today’s post. It’s about cork. Admittedly it might not sound that exciting, but you’d be wrong. I love cork and not just because it normally comes with wine or fizz. The use of cork in interiors is …

A successful trip to Ikea… and a tiny intro to ‘Scale’ in interiors

Published by Karen Knox

One of the things I try and do at home is to buy furniture that’s in keeping with the period of the property. Our 3 bed, semi is 1960’s, so late mid-century. I’m in no way trying to recreate a 1960’s home, that’s not me, I prefer to mix up design styles and eras as they tend to create the most interesting spaces…. BUT I do think post war houses (generally with lower ceilings and no period features of note) look best with mid-century or Scandinavian style furniture. It’s clean, un-fussy, uses lots of natural materials and the size and scale of that furniture works with the 2.4m ceilings and smaller room sizes of that era… and those that followed. This kind of touches on a whole post i’m still in the process of writing all about ‘Scale’ in interiors. Because some people get it a bit wrong and then wonder why their room feels “off”. It’s very subtle, but a room with the wrong size and scale furniture in just doesn’t work as it …

To ply or not to ply – A floor quandary

Published by Karen Knox

We’ve uhmmed and ahhed about what to do with the loft bedroom flooring for ages now. As i’m going all out Scandinavian for the bedroom design, a blonde wood floor seemed the obvious choice. But then, to save some money and get this room finished in time for Christmas, we played around with the idea of simply painting the chipboard subfloor black (to which the builder just sighed and shook his head). After going around in circles for several weeks, mentally noting the pros and cons of both options, we finally decided on floor boards. Done. Having an actual floor laid meant I finally got to work with my fave joiners again, Bare Joinery. Which is always a pleasure, as they’re always up for a challenge and happy(ish) to experiment with materials, the design, the process, and most importantly, they don’t sigh and shake their heads at my less than conventional ideas. Not within view anyway. Our plan to lay floorboards sounds pretty standard, apart from the fact I didn’t want them to be actual floorboards, as …