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A home office is where many of us spend our days (and indeed, for many of us, our nights!) these days. Whether you began working from home since the start of the pandemic, or you’ve recently changed jobs in order to be able to spend more time at home and shift your work-life balance in your favour, your home office shouldn’t be an afterthought. 

Before so many of us made the switch to permanently working from home, the odd days that we did work at home were pretty simple to handle. We’d either have our laptop at the dining table, on our knees on the sofa, or maybe we’d be found WFB – that’s working from bed! But since moving to home working in the longer term, we’re finding that working like that permanently isn’t great for us – not just in terms of productivity, but also for our posture and general health, with increasing numbers of worker

Children’s bedrooms often bring to mind walls covered in Barbie pink, superheroes, football team or the latest cartoon characters that they are into – and if that isn’t your style, then you probably aren’t very inclined to have that kind of thing in your home. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to create a dream bedroom that they’ll love, and you will enjoy being in too.  Whether your children are lucky enough to have a bedroom to themselves, or space is at a premium and siblings have to share, we’ve got ideas that will inspire all kinds of homes. 

Adding outdoor lighting to your garden is a great way to open up the space so that you can use it more effectively through the evenings in the warmer summer months. And although the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are slowly starting to lift here in the UK, international travel is yet to be truly back on the agenda. That means that many of us are using some of the money that we might otherwise have used on travel to improve our homes and gardens, allowing us to make use of the space we have through the summer. 

If making the most of your garden by lighting it up in the evenings is what brought you to this post, then read on – we’re going to cover everything from how much lighting you need, where to add it, what safety considerations you need to be aware of, to all the different types and styles of lighting you can choose from. 

Spending so much time working from home recently has got many of us thinking that it is time to freshen up our homes, but it can be hard to be inspired if your home hasn’t been different colours before, or if it is the first time you’ve been let loose with a paintbrush. If following trends is important to you, and you want your home to reflect that aspect of your personality, then you’ll be here to find out the exact shades that are trending in the home. 

In this post, we’ll be looking at colour giant Pantone, paint brands Dulux and Benjamin Moore, and stock photography behemoth Shutterstock’s selections for colours of the year, considering colour psychology and why it is important for the home, how to add colour temporarily and in bathrooms, and whether using more than one trend at a time is a good idea, before looking at homeware trends that are big in 2021.  

We spend around than a third of our lives sleeping, and most of us spend even longer than that in our bedrooms. That means our sleep spaces shouldn’t be an afterthought – they should be relaxing rooms that are comfortable, soothing, and encourage us to take our rest. The importance of sleep to our busy lives means that we should all prioritise creating an oasis of calm for our bedrooms, and this is even more important for those of us that encounter sleep disturbances such as insomnia, or conditions such as anxiety. 

Comfortable and relaxing doesn’t mean unstylish though, and a beautiful room really helps to create a feeling of contentment. Think back to how amazing the sleep is when you are on vacation in a beautiful hotel with a fabulous view, with crisp white linens on the bed. While we can’t completely recreate a luxury hotel in our homes (unfortunately very few of us can afford housekeeping services to change our sheets!) we can still create peaceful resting spaces with a luxurious feel that help us to achieve that deep sleep. A bit of thought, time and financial investment in our bedrooms can pay dividends in terms of the quality of our sleep.