Our homes are never really finished, are they?

Playroom -Study - Office

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently, partly because of the homes I visit through my work, but also because of my own home.

Are our homes ever actually finished? I don’t think they are.

And I don’t mean that in the slightly terrifying way of suggesting that as soon as you’ve finished decorating the sitting room, you should start ripping out the kitchen. I mean that our homes evolve because we evolve.

Even if you designed your home beautifully ten years ago and it felt completely like you, there’s a good chance that something about it wouldn’t feel quite right today. Because you’re probably not exactly the same person you were ten years ago either.

I was thinking about clothes when I started writing this. There are things I happily wore ten or fifteen years ago that I wouldn’t dream of wearing now. High heels being one of them. I think the last time I wore proper heels was possibly two years ago, and even then only for a few hours. Comfort has definitely won that particular battle.

And I think our homes are a little bit like that too.

It’s not necessarily about fashion. Actually, I don’t think it should be about fashion at all. It’s much more about how we live and what feels right to us now.

children playroom

When children are tiny, we need somewhere for toys, practical storage and probably a sofa that can survive quite a lot. Then suddenly they’re teenagers and what we really need is somewhere they can disappear with their friends, ideally with a door we can close so we don’t have to look at the mess.

Then they go to university. And quite possibly, they come back again.

The way families live has changed too. Not everyone automatically sells the family house and downsizes once the children leave. With buying a first home becoming increasingly difficult, adult children may stay at home for longer or return after university.

So our homes have to adapt. The playroom becomes something else. The spare bedroom becomes an office. The office becomes a bedroom again.

But evolving your home doesn’t mean getting rid of everything you own and starting again.

Sometimes you need very little.

Paint is probably one of the easiest and most transformative changes. If you’ve had the same colour on your walls for ten years and the room isn’t making you particularly happy anymore, perhaps it’s simply time to change it.

We’ve certainly had a lot of grey over the last decade. Grey walls, grey sofas, grey floors, grey kitchens. There was a period when grey seemed to become the answer to absolutely everything, almost as though the aim was to disappear into our own houses.

I’m very happy that we’re moving towards warmer, more individual interiors again.

That doesn’t mean that if you’ve always loved pale, quiet colours you suddenly need a dark green sitting room or a bright red kitchen. Your home still needs to feel like you. Maybe it’s simply a warmer neutral, a soft green or a little terracotta. Or perhaps the walls stay exactly as they are and you bring colour in somewhere else.

A different lampshade can completely change a corner. So can a cushion, a plant or simply a bunch of flowers on the kitchen table.

Hallway lights

And one of my favourite ways to make a change costs absolutely nothing: move things around.

Take the picture you’ve been looking at in the hallway for eight years and try it in the bedroom. Move a lamp. Swap two side tables. Take everything off a shelf and put it back differently.

I often go into clients’ homes and realise that they already own lovely things.

Sometimes they’ve simply stopped seeing them.

There is another thing I hear quite often, particularly from people with younger children: I’ll buy a good sofa when they’re older.

When they stop spilling things. When life is a little calmer.

I completely understand it. And obviously I wouldn’t recommend putting a £10,000 designer chair in the playroom and hoping for the best. But I also think life is for living.

If you can afford to buy something better made, I would rather see you buy one good piece that you genuinely love and live with it. Good furniture can be repaired. Sofas can be reupholstered. Tables collect marks and memories. Antique furniture has usually survived several families before it even arrives in your house.

And personally, I think a home becomes much more interesting when it contains things that have been collected over time rather than everything arriving on the same delivery van.

Perhaps that’s really what I’m trying to say.

Your home doesn’t need to be finished. It needs to work for you now.

Every few years, it’s worth looking around and asking yourself whether it still does. Maybe you need to completely rethink a room. Or maybe you just need to move a picture, buy some flowers and finally paint over that grey wall.

Both count.