For dramatic effect...
Bold decorative change is in the air for many homes post-lockdown
‘We spent the last two years doing up this house,” says Rory Kelly, interior designer. “And now that I’ve spent 10 weeks inside it, I want to redo the whole thing.”
He’s not the only one. The experience of remote-working, home-schooling and generally being confined to barracks, has prompted many of us to re-imagine our homes. “I think that people are going to want their houses redone from top to bottom,” he says. “Whether they can afford it is another matter.”
Ironically, those with older unaltered homes have often found it easier to adapt to spending more time indoors. Old houses tend to have smaller rooms and more of them, making it easier for their inhabitants to find a quiet place to work. Newer, or recently renovated homes, have fewer places to hide.
“We all have a dream about living in an open-plan space, but when the pandemic hit, we realised that we needed separate offices,” Kelly says. “Most of the houses that I’ve worked on have very little separate space. There’s nowhere to put an office without someone losing a bedroom and when your dining table becomes your office, you’ve lost your home.”
Kelly and his husband live in an endof-terrace townhouse, the ground floor of which has been converted into a light-filled openplan space. It’s superb for socialising and soothing to return to at the end of the day, but utterly unsuited to two blokes trying to work from home.
“A lot of it comes down to acoustics. Office spaces are built with ceilings that absorb sound, but most homes are not. As soon as you put a laptop on the dining room table, the walls begin to vibrate.”
Then, there’s the privacy thing. His prediction is, given that remote working seems to be the way of the future, more people will want to create a private space to work. “And they won’t want the office in the house. They’ll want it at the end of the garden!”
That’s the practical side of it. But Kelly also feels that decorative change is in the air. Open-plan living spaces, typically combining the functionality of kitchen, living and dining areas, tend to be conservative in their décor. This is partly because they usually include large expanses of glass (you can’t really do anything with glass, other than look through it).
It’s also to do with money. When choosing a big-ticket item, like a kitchen, people are understandably keen to invest in something with longevity. The result is that many open-plan spaces are bland to the point of dullness. And Kelly, for one, is finding it all a bit mundane. “I want drama!” he says. “Everything in our home is safe. I like very fine items and I’m prepared to wait until I can afford them — these things last — but if I were doing it again, I’d put a lot more drama into the house. “We have a dramatic couch and we have dramatic artwork, but it’s not enough!”
Usually, Kelly (above) admits, he is the main source of drama in the home. Now, he just can’t wait to get his hands on some yellow paint. “I’m going to frame our navy kitchen in Dutch Orange,” he says. “It’s a beautiful rich melting butter colour from Farrow & Ball.” (€91 for 2.5 litres).
For those in search of domestic drama of the decorative kind, he recommends buying a sculptural table lamp. “Sometimes that alone can be sufficient. I like expensive brands like Julian Chichester and Porta Romana, but it can be as simple as going into Homesense in Blanchardstown.”
If you’re prepared to order online, Pooky has some eye-catching table lamps in the classic style (from around €60) and Audenza has nutty ones in the shape of animals and plants (from around €100).