Rotate and Refresh With Seasonal Styling

Having a love of interiors means I’m constantly itching to make changes and switch things up in my home. This is especially true after the Christmas decorations are put away and the house is feeling feeling somewhat empty and flat. It doesn't necessarily need to be big changes, just little tweaks and adjustments here and there that can make a space feel revitalised. I thought other people might feel the same, so I’ve come up with a few ideas that might inspire you on ways to refresh your home with each season.

Rearrange Your Furniture

Whenever I’m craving a bit of a change I rearrange the furniture and it gives the whole room a different perspective. I remember doing this as a child, I loved rearranging the furniture in my bedroom and feeling like my whole room had been given a makeover. Whether you do this in the living room, bedroom, or the dining room, moving things around is a guaranteed way to refresh any space without spending a penny.

Cushions and Throws

One of the easiest ways to switch things up in your home is by swapping out your throws and cushions. Experiment with layering up cushions with different patterns and textures. Play around with colour to suit the season, for instance, autumn is the perfect time to add warmer colours such as rusts and earthy tones with velvets, wools and knitted throws that give a cosy and warm feeling. Whereas during the summer, you might consider linens, cottons and lighter fabrics with accents of blue or green that give a fresher and brighter feeling.

Create seasonal displays

The best way to breathe some life into any space is to add some plants or flowers. Plants are an affordable way to accessorise your home. Biophilic design has been one of the biggest interior design trends for the last few years. Get creative and bring the outside in with on-trend dried flowers, a bowl of succulents, seasonal blooms and plants. Experiment with using greenery at different heights from the floor, to shelving, to console tables. The benefits of keeping fresh flowers and plants in your home are endless. They assist in oxidation, in cooling, helping with breathing and deterring illness, as well as cleaning the air, boosting healing and helping concentration. Get creative and experiment with making your own bouquets of seasonal flowers, you can use a variety of pots, bowls or baskets to place them in. If you struggle to keep your plants alive or perhaps there isn’t enough light reaching the shelves there are some amazing artificial plants that have the same visual impact.

Seasonal fruit isn’t only delicious but it can make a simple yet dramatic display or centrepiece for any table. For example, a bowl of organic pumpkins in autumn, figs or aubergines in winter, artichokes in spring and lemons and limes in summer.

Seasonal Scent

Scent is such a powerful tool to create a different atmosphere in your home. For the same reason that you’d buy a Christmas scented candle to get into the festive spirit and you may buy something more fruit-based or floral in the summer months. It’s the perfect way to set the tone in your home on a daily basis and might just be the finishing touch to making your house feel more like home. Experiment with fresh flowers, scented candles, soaps, or diffusers.  Everyone will have their own favourite aromas, it’s all about finding the one that works for you, don't be afraid to try new scents and experiment.

It’s vital to engage all the senses in interior design, scent has the potential to reduce stress, increase focus, enhance memory, and uplift our mood. A Nobel Prize–winning study found that the average person has around 1,000 olfactory genes in their body, and can recall around 10,000 different smells. Further research suggests that 75% of our daily emotions are influenced by smell, while our mood may improve by 40% after smelling a pleasant fragrance. Scent is the sense closest linked to memory! Studies have shown that people can remember a scent with 65% accuracy after 1 year while visual memory sinks to 50% after only a few months. It is fascinating how smelling a certain scent can bring you back to a particular moment in time, conjure up a childhood memory or remind you of a particular place or person.

Wearing perfume on your person is as much for yourself as it is a signature to others. Aromas are not just about smelling good but also about creating a personal identity for yourself and your home. Restaurants, hotels, shops and spas often use fragrance to create a specific atmosphere that they want to portray that matches to their signature brand image.

Get Painting

If you have any furniture that is looking a bit tired take the opportunity to get busy with a paint brush and completely transform it. You can re-modernise a piece of furniture with a lick of paint and new handles. Trust me, even if you’ve never done it before, it’s not hard to paint furniture and there are plenty of tutorials out there to guide you along the way.

Painting a room or just a feature wall has the potential to completely transform a room. There’s nothing quite like a crisp and clean coat of paint to make an impact and create a new and fresh feel. Feature walls are a great way to bring colour to a space without a huge expense. Perhaps you could experiment with warmer colours in the winter to make the space feel cosier and more intimate and a fresher, brighter colours for the summer. It will have a dramatic and immediate effect. 

Invest in a new rug

If you want to refresh any room in your home, one of the best things you can do is to invest in a nice area rug. Rugs can do a number of different things to a room, they can divide the room into different areas, create a theme as well as add texture, colour and pattern.

Rugs can help to zone a room and make it feel more intimate. Where there are no defining walls rugs can create zones such as a conversation area in the living room, a seating area in an office, or the dining area in the kitchen.

Rugs are an instant way to create a soft, luxurious surface underfoot and can make a huge difference to the overall feel of a room. However, they can be quite expensive depending on the construction, size, material and country of origin.

A rug has the ability to add to (or change) the colour scheme in a room. Changing the mood of your room can be as easy as swapping between two rugs. Consider buying two different styles for your living room: one for summer and one for winter.

Move Around Accessories

Try clearing a large area and get all your small accessories together such as picture frames, ornaments, vases, candles, etc. This will make it much easier to see what you have available. Accessorising and styling  is all about balance. Start by accessorising with your largest and heaviest items first. This will help to get the right scale and then you can then add in the smaller items to work with these.

Try to vary the layout and formula of you styling, it can look very effective if you allow some of the taller/larger items to stand alone and then have different sizes of groups of some of the smaller items. If you are styling shelving you want the eye to dance around your shelves so it looks best if you have items of varying heights and sizes. You want to keep varying the relationships between your items so that you have items that take up space horizontally and items that take up space vertically. You do not want everything to be symmetrical, people often fall into a bad habit of placing everything in a straight line on a shelf however it will be seen from varying angles.

Accessorise with books by switching up the positioning and aligning them vertically and horizontally to help make the styling feel more dynamic and interesting. Create little stacks that you can use to elevate certain objects and mix up the positioning of the books.

Texture is very important to keep in mind when styling, experiment with mixing smooth things with rough and shiny with matt; keep the eye moving with variety. You can use woven and natural elements like woods and baskets, glass, ceramics, marble, metals, stone, the options are endless, make it interesting!

Sometimes less is more and embracing a little negative space you can give the rest of your styling room to breathe. We want to achieve a curated look rather than cluttered. Take a step back and assess, don’t be afraid to play around and get creative.

Hang Some Striking Wall Art

Hanging some wall art is a great way to refresh your home décor and completely transform a room. Art doesn’t have to be expensive, there are some beautiful prints out there or if you’re feeling adventurous you could try and create your own artwork. Gallery walls are a timeless and creative way to add an interesting visual element to an otherwise plain wall. They help to inject character and personality as well as some colour into your home. Putting a gallery wall of your own together might feel a little daunting at first and can take some time. However, simply pick a few art pieces or your favourite photos and play around with mapping them out on the floor first. You can either use all of the same style and size frames or you can play around with a variety of different shapes and styles. Pinterest has endless ideas on how you can lay out your gallery walls so get creative.

However, if a gallery wall isn’t for you, then there are plenty of other art options out there. From striking shelving with curated accessories, plinths with a beautiful sculpture, to one-off art pieces, you can create a truly unique look that showcases your personality.

Enjoy your home all year round

Now for the fun part… get creative and enjoy your home all year round. Tag us in your pictures on Instagram, we would love to see how you rotate and refresh your home and keep it interesting throughout the seasons.