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.

Adding colour to our homes is becoming increasingly popular, as we are seeing with our customers' choices. Using colour in your home can really add personality and using softer shades is a gentle way to add colour - and less scary if you’re more used to a neutral colour palette.

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.

In this week's blog, we’re sharing with you our customers' garage to home office transformation. With our help, Emma has transformed her cold and unused garage into an inviting and cosy home office that is completely personal to her. It is now a beautiful office space, the envy of all on those work video calls! And, amazingly, the total design spend was only £2,800.

For most of us, the biggest challenge with curtains is how to hang them. We often see the same mistakes made over and over, and they are easy to avoid.

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!!

Many years ago, when I first moved into my home I was stumped as to what colour to paint my Victorian living room. It was all white, and although a light blank canvas it lacked something extra.

November already? How did it come round so quickly?! Time to pack away the autumnal decorations and enter Christmas mode. It feels like Christmas hits the shops and online earlier each year, giving you that buzz to get organised and start shopping for your friends and family.

As an online interior design company, we design open plan kitchen dining living rooms all the time, and we want to share with you some of our expert tips and advice. These tips are important pointers you need to know, so you can arrange your furniture in your open plan room the best way possible.

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.

Interior design is an exciting and creative process that can transform a room into a beautiful and functional space. However, it is essential to avoid common mistakes that can derail your interior design project.

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.

Here at The Living House we love panelling! It can instantly transform a room from bare and mundane to stylish and engaging. It is so versatile and can add character and definition to your space. It can even help to change the feel of the room, increasing the sense of height or drawing your attention to (or away from) a certain feature. But knowing where to start can be tricky.

No one wants to get it wrong when it comes to updating their home. It’s costly and demoralising. It’s definitely not what you set out to achieve and yet when we meet new customers, we often get asked ‘why doesn’t this room work?’, ‘why doesn’t it look how I imagined?’ and ‘what’s wrong with it??!’.

Every year there’s a new round of trends and ideas to bombard us with. At The Living House we love to see what’s next around the corner, but we’re not saying you need to change your home every year as that would be ridiculous (who has the energy for that?!). Sometimes though it’s fun to see where the trends are taking us and incorporate a few new updates here and there into your home.

It’s a new year, the Christmas decorations are all packed away and your home looks a bit, well, empty? Right?

I know there are definitely a few empty spaces in my living room, so here at The Living House we have had a look at the new collections hitting the shops and put together our favourite interior finds. Take a look and see if there is something just right to fill that gap in your home and spruce up your room for the new year.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without adding to my collection of baubles every year! It’s always so tempting to just add a couple more. And once the children get involved, they always see something that they just have to have!! But I don’t mind. For me it all adds to the traditions of Christmas, and the memories from each year - trying to remember who was responsible for the crazy Santa on a motorbike decoration they chose when they were four.

Everyday we meet lovely customers and chat to them about their homes, and their design problems and dilemmas. And although every customer and every home is unique, there are also themes to the questions that we get asked. Below we have answered 5 questions that have cropped up recently in our chats to customers.