Good Evening,
I hope you had a lovely weekend and are looking forward to the summer, whether you are travelling or staying at home.
I’ve been busy planning our new home. If you have seen on my Instagram Stories, we have recently bought a new house that I am slowly making our dream home. This whole process has got me thinking about just how much choice there is when it comes to interiors.
Styles, trends, opinions, "must-haves" and advice arrive from every direction, all at once and all the time now. Where on earth do you even start, and who do you listen to?
If you are in the similar position to me, I want you to take a deep breath and remember there is no right or wrong way to create a home that feels like yours. This is the really fun stage, it shouldn’t be overwhelming or intimidating, it should be enjoyable so don’t forget that!
Whose advice do you trust?
The interiors world has never been louder. We have historians and architects, professional designers, influencers, DIYers, and friends-of-friends all sharing what works for them. That can feel overwhelming, but it’s also incredibly liberating, because it means you’re not limited to one “correct” look or one narrow definition of good taste.
My biggest piece of advice is to make sure you’re listening to a range of voices. Seek out expert guidance, the people who’ve studied design history, understand proportion, light and colour, and pair that with the lived experience of real homes and real families. When you listen broadly like this, you start to see patterns, notice what you’re consistently drawn to, and understand why you love what you love.
I have a whole section on this topic in my book, so if you want to read more on this, then take a look.
Looking back to move forward
To understand why interiors can feel so gloriously open‑ended now, it helps to look back. For much of modern decorating history, style was more closely tied to the decade you were living in; colour palettes shifted with culture, economics and mood, and homes often carried the visual fingerprints of their era.
It’s easy to forget that interior design wasn’t always as accessible as it is today. For a long time, beautifully designed homes were the domain of the wealthy, with architects and skilled craftspeople creating bespoke interiors behind closed doors while everyone else focused on practicality and durability. Good taste was something you inherited or hired, not something you experimented with on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
That began to change over the twentieth century. Department stores and catalogues made furniture more affordable, DIY stores appeared on every high street, interiors magazines landed on coffee tables every month, and TV programmes started teaching us how to decorate rather than simply showing us glamorous houses we’d never be able to recreate. Slowly but surely, design moved from rarefied luxury into everyday life. Decorating stopped being about status and started becoming about self‑expression.
Every decade tells a story through colour.
In the 1940s, interiors leaned towards muted, earthy tones and practical restraint. Wartime hardship and uncertainty encouraged deep greens, browns and burgundies, colours that felt grounding and dependable when the outside world did not. Homes became somewhere to retreat, and the colour choices reflected that need for comfort and stability.
By the 1950s, hope crept back in. After years of rationing, interiors softened into sweeter, more joyful shades: soft pinks, buttery yellows, powder blues, pistachio greens. Rooms were not just being decorated; colour was being used to gently reintroduce optimism and lightness into everyday life.
The 1960s brought a bolder, more expressive energy. Social change and a spirit of liberation showed up in interiors as brighter, punchier colour – confident oranges, vibrant yellows, turquoise and psychedelic combinations that felt playful and rebellious. Homes became more expressive than ever before, and colour broke quite a few “rules” in the process.
Then came the 1970s with its earthy oranges, browns and greens, bringing nature indoors and grounding interiors in warmth and comfort. Olive green kitchens, ochre accents, rich timber tones – many of these hues have made a huge comeback today precisely because they still make us feel cocooned and connected. Some trends don’t disappear; they simply retreat and return when we need them again.
The 1980s turned the dial up again: gloss, confidence, contrast and colour with presence. High‑contrast schemes, primary colours, lacquered finishes and statement‑everything interiors embraced a “more is more” philosophy. Decorating was bold, unapologetic and full of personality.
The 1990s, in response, softened and pared things back, ushering in a calmer, more neutral way of decorating. Magnolia, grey and minimalist schemes promised a fresh, quiet antidote to all that visual noise. At the time it felt modern and chic, although if you grew up in the 90s, you may now have a life‑long aversion to lilac and flat grey walls as a result. Calm, as we later discovered, does not have to mean colourless.
For years, you could almost date a room by its palette alone. The decade stamped itself on your walls.
The great design opening
Then interiors began to democratise. Design advice moved beyond professionals and glossy magazines into everyday life through television, books, blogs and, eventually, the online world. Inspiration no longer came from one showroom or one expert voice, it came from everywhere.
The internet changed how we engage with design. Pinterest gave us a place to save ideas and spot patterns. Instagram let us peek inside homes around the world. TikTok turned renovation tips and styling ideas into quick, digestible tutorials. Incredible, yes, but also the start of choice overload, with so many “must‑try” styles that it became easy to lose sight of what you actually love.
Then 2020 arrived, and our relationship with home shifted again. If the internet changed how we find inspiration, the pandemic changed why we decorate. Almost overnight, our homes became everything: office, gym, school, restaurant, sanctuary. Rooms that looked great on a screen didn’t always feel good to live in all day; cool greys suddenly felt cold, minimal spaces a little empty.
We remembered that our homes actively shape how we feel. Colour became emotional again. Instead of “What’s trending?”, the questions became “How can my bedroom feel calmer?”, “How can my living room feel cosier?”, “What colours will help me feel happier or more focused?”. Warm yellow kitchens lifting winter mornings, cocooning greens in bedrooms helping us slow down, rich dining‑room colours encouraging conversations that last for hours.
That’s why we’re now in an era of more meaningful decorating. People are mixing old with new, choosing colours for feeling rather than fashion, filling homes with pieces that tell stories and palettes that hold memories. We’re no longer trapped by trends; we’re surrounded by references. And the most beautiful homes are increasingly designed around the people who live in them, not the algorithm watching them.
Why Pinterest is your best friend
With all this inspiration and choice, this is where Pinterest really comes into its own, it’s a tool I use almost every day. Once you’ve opened yourself up to different ideas, you need somewhere to gather them, otherwise it all blurs into noise and those “perfect” inspiration pics disappear into the scroll. Pinterest gives you a calm place to pin everything you love, so you don’t lose track of that one image or room that made something click for you.
Pinterest makes it incredibly easy to:
Collect images from books, magazines, blogs, Instagram and beyond into one place
Group ideas into boards – for example “living room layouts”, “historic colour palettes”, or “kitchens that feel calm”
Step back and see the common threads: the shapes, colours and moods you keep pinning without even realising it
When you look at your boards with a bit of distance, you’ll often spot the beginnings of your own style emerging whether that’s a love of strong, saturated colour, a pull towards softer, historical schemes, or a mix of the two.
This is where other people’s advice and homes stop being overwhelming and starts becoming a toolbox you can dip into, adapt and make your own.
I hope you found this little wander through interiors history helpful and inspiring, and that it’s given you permission to cherry-pick, remix and make your home entirely your own.
Tash xx