House to Home Column - Styling your home is all about layering elements together

I’m a home-styler, which means that I help people style their home for their own enjoyment, or I help them stage their home to sell it so that someone else falls in love with it just like they did when they bought it.

I started my home styling/home staging/decluttering business because I have a passion for interiors, I love meeting and helping people, and I want people’s homes to make them happy. With this job I get to combine all of these things.

I truly believe that everyone has the right to a beautiful home and it is my mission to help you achieve it - even if you have champagne tastes and a lemonade budget.

In fact, I prefer working with lemonade budgets because the secret to good styling is that it needn’t cost a fortune, it just takes a good eye. The smallest changes can make a big difference to how you live and to the way you feel in your home.

So whether you live in a five-bedroom detached, a three-bedroom semi, or a studio flat, every single one of you should be able to walk into your home, close the door, sit down, and say, “I love it here”. Your home should be your sanctuary, it should inspire you, and it should make you feel good.

Your home should be identifiably yours and it should say something about your personality. Remember Through the Keyhole (the Lloyd Grossman era)? That’s what we’re aiming for. I should be able to work my way through your home and it should tell a story about who you are and where you’ve been in life.

These days it’s too easy to get hung up on Instagram trends. A lovely lady recently asked me to go and have a look at her house because she says she used to be brave with colour but she’s spent too much time on Instagram and now everything in her house is grey. The good news for her is that a fresh lick of paint will make all the difference.

Trends are fine and can introduce you to new ideas, but you will tire of them easily because they are someone else’s ideas and you’ll see many homes that look the same. A lot of you will now be thinking: ‘But I don’t know what I like!’ or ‘I don’t have any ideas’. And to that I will say, ‘Yes you do!’, you just don’t know how to articulate it yet.

Home styling is not about glibly copying a given style, it’s about taking different elements from different styles, and even different eras, and layering them up to create your own style.

If you don’t feel entirely happy in a room then it’s maybe because it’s not the right colour, or there aren’t enough layers of texture, there isn’t enough of the right kind of light, or the furniture placement is wrong. All these things are easily remedied and don’t have to cost a fortune, you just have to know what you’re doing.

Over the coming months I’ll be empowering you to make small changes in your homes that change how you live. I’ll be encouraging you to ditch the ‘greige’ and bring some colour into your life. I’ll definitely be singing the praises of plants. But most of all I’ll be helping you to fall in love with your home all over again.

Your home should be your happy place, so let’s make it so.