My fiancé, Liam, and I moved into our new home a year ago, wow, how time flies! Our house was built in the 1970s, a style I’ve never been particularly drawn to since I love period properties. However, where I live, they are few and far between, and unfortunately, period homes were out of our budget for our second home. I saw this as a challenge and wanted to bring our own character and personality to what was once a very grey and dull 1970s house. While our home may lack traditional character, it more than makes up for it with its spacious rooms and the abundance of natural light pouring in through the large windows

One of the room transformations I’m most proud of in our home is our master bedroom. It’s my happy place. Warm, cosy, and the perfect retreat after a long day! When we moved in, the entire house was white and grey, and the master bedroom was no exception. It felt cold and lacked personality, it needed an injection of warmth!

In this week's blog, I'm sharing the transformation of my master bedroom, not just the before and after photos, but the process and what it’s like as an interior designer making changes to your own home.

At The Living House we are all about designing family homes to be lived in. Our goal is to create beautiful and practical spaces that evolve with your family through every stage of life.

When designing with children in mind, it’s easy to focus too much on their current developmental phase. However, kids grow up quickly, and designing solely for the present can lead to costly mistakes. The living room is a shared space where families come together, making it essential for it to be both functional and long-lasting. Every element should be family-friendly and designed for longevity. Keep reading for our top tips on designing a family-friendly living room that grows with your children.

Designing a small bedroom can be a bit challenging since space is limited, but it’s definitely possible to create a functional and beautiful small bedroom! The key is making the most of every inch of space without letting things feel cluttered or cramped. But no need to stress—we’ve got plenty of interior design tips and tricks to help make your small bedroom feel more spacious and inviting.

In the lead up to moving into my new home, I knew one of the first rooms I wanted to tackle was the downstairs loo. I eventually want to make changes to all the rooms in my home to make it feel like mine, and as an interior designer, of course I find it hard to wait! Though it's the smallest room in the house, a downstairs loo is a fabulous place where you can be bold with your decor. You can go for something a little unexpected that creates a pleasant surprise for your guests. One thing I did need to bear in mind was budget. I knew that I didn’t want to spend lots of money on the downstairs loo, so I needed to think about how I could make the most of what I had.

Open plan rooms have grown increasingly popular over the years and usually become the hub of the family home. When working with customers who need help designing their open plan room, a question they usually ask is, ‘How do I create a flow?’. This is an important factor to consider for open plan rooms because having a flow will create a cohesive and well designed space. We’re sharing with you our interior tips and tricks so you can create an open plan that flows beautifully.

Designing a kids shared bedroom can be a tricky task. You want both of your children to love it and feel like they have their own space, but most importantly, it needs to be practical too. An important factor when designing your children’s shared bedroom is that you want it to be fair, with each child having an equal amount of space to call their ‘own’ and showcasing both of their personalities. We’ve shared our top 5 interior design tips to inspire you when designing your kids' shared bedroom.

When designing a kid's bedroom, you want it to last for years to come and have longevity. We know that children go through many phases, from liking dinosaurs one minute to football the next. As they grow and go through different likes and dislikes, it’s impossible to constantly make changes to their bedroom. We’re sharing our tips to design a kids bedroom that will last for years to come and grow with them.

Kids bedrooms are usually the smallest room in the home, which can come with some challenges. You want to maximise the storage space because of the never ending toys, but the room is small, which leaves you wondering how you are going to fit everything in while still creating a cool and fun bedroom your child will love.

With some clever storage ideas, multifunctional furniture, interesting paint techniques, and much more, you can make the most of every inch of space in your kid's small bedroom. We’ve shared 10 of our top tips to help you design your kid's small bedroom.

Families come in all shapes and sizes, and no family is the same, just like our homes. When designing for our customers, we create a room that works for the whole family and that is truly bespoke to them. Living rooms are the most common spaces we design for families, they are one of the rooms in the home that everyone uses.

After years of experience when it comes to designing living rooms for families, we wanted to share our expert interior design tips with you.

We’ve designed a fair few nurseries at The Living House now, all with parents wanting the same thing - a beautiful nursery without costing the earth. We’ve put together our top interior design tips to help you decorate your nursery on a budget.

I don’t know about you, but for me, January always feels quite bleak with the cold and wet weather and, of course, the dark evenings. If I’m out and about for the day, I can’t wait to get home to hibernate and be all cosy! Once in and settled by this, I mean instantly changing into my comfy pyjamas and oodie, all I want to do is chill out and relax in my living room. In the winter, you start to look around your living room and think, how could I make this space cosy?!

Well, if this is exactly what you’re thinking, the good news is that I have shared 5 tips to make your living room feel like a cosy haven!

In this week's blog, I am going to go through some tips and advice I have learned along the way when designing home offices and guest bedrooms that need to work for the everyday, for the odd occasion, and for the future too - not much to ask?!

We’ve shared with you our interior expert tips to nail your living room alcoves and make them work in your living room.

We’ve all seen the beautiful pictures on Pinterest of a room centered around the fireplace. It provides character and symmetry - and of course is amazing at Christmas time. It’s the all important focal point that designers talk about, and the starting point for the design and layout of the whole room.

At The Living House, we have to admit we are HUGE rug fans. Rugs feature in almost all of our design schemes. When used in the right way, a rug makes your living room feel complete, cosy and it brings it all together beautifully. But it can be tricky to know how to choose a rug and even harder to find THE rug that’s going to work perfectly in your own living room.

An L shaped room is a tricky space. It’s not easily designed with awkward angles, dark corners and narrow spaces. Not to mention various doors and access points to consider. It can be hard to find the balance between keeping it open but still feeling like it’s a cohesive space. Whether the space is big or small it can be a challenge - but we can help you work with what you’ve got and make the most of your L shaped room.

This is a really common problem with these shaped rooms, especially in new builds. We get asked for help with layouts often and for good reason. It’s tricky to get right!!

Beautifully styled shelves can look like a work of art when styled correctly. You may scroll through Instagram and Pinterest feeling inspired, but you don't know where to start with making your own shelves look like the dreamy inspiration you’ve seen. Between the three of us at The Living House, we have over 30 years of experience and top tips we can share with you to help you style your shelves. We’ve broken down our shelf styling tips to make it easy for you to style swoon-worthy shelves in your home.

When it comes to small living rooms, it can be challenging to know how best to arrange the furniture and find a place for everything. Getting the layout right in any living room can be tricky, but it is especially important when it’s a small living room. At The Living House we always begin by exploring different layout options when we are designing rooms for our customers, to see what the possibilities are and what will work best for the space.

We’ve been working with a lovely customer this week who has a new build house with a long rectangular living room. She was desperate to get away from the corridor effect in the room - lining up the sofas and TV on the long walls, but didn’t know what else to do. She was feeling seriously stuck.