Don’t be afraid to think big!
Swimming pools are tempting, but do your research before diving in, says CLIVE ASLET
Big is beautiful. Apparently we’re done with discreet furnishings or quietly neutral colour schemes — and when it comes to pattern, colour and size, we want everything to be larger than life.
Just look at the ginormous Christo and Jeanne- Claude sculpture: The London Mastaba, parked in London’s Serpentine. You can’t miss it. it’s a vast geometric in eyepopping shades of pink, red and blue.
is it the recent relentless heat that has made us so bold? Certainly cacti and palms are huge at the moment in more ways than one.
‘ i’ve just finished a smart London penthouse and it looks like Arizona. i’ve gone wild with oversized cacti,’ says interior designer Joanna Wood. According to Ciara Sheridan, of Wyevale garden Centres, the demand for cacti is up 55 per cent this year, with buyers increasingly experimenting with larger varieties. if you want to give them a go, EuphorbiaIngens grows to 2 metres indoors or 15 metres outside, £150, wyevalegardencentres. co.uk.
You’ll need vast pots to put them in. And the Silo range of over-sized terracotta vases from Natuzzi, from £251, inspired by the sundrenched plains of italy, will work beautifully (launching online soon, natuzzi.co.uk).
The trend can work in most spaces. But limit yourself to one or two items. You don’t want to end up feeling like Alice in Wonderland surrounded by enormous furnishings.
‘go for one eye-catching piece like a big, boldly coloured sofa, which acts as a focal point,’ says designer Vanessa Brady.
Perhaps something like the Clemence
four-seater sofa in emerald green, £2,400, habitat.co.uk.
Conversely, large pieces can make modest rooms seem bigger. Rather than hanging a mirror, you could try leaning a large one against a wall, creating the illusion of depth. Brissi has a range designed for exactly that. Their Vermont style is £595, brissi.com.
if you want to splash out on one or two decorative pieces, opt for a striking vase, for example, that will look both tidier and make more of an impact than several smaller ornaments.
Or you can give a nod to the trend with oversized accessories such as cushions, chunky-knitted throws or hefty table lamps. Try the Tiki Tiki Carnival cushions, £ 65, andrewmartin. co. uk, or John Lewis’s floor cushion by Patternity, in monochrome, £70, johnlewis.com.
Abigail Ahern uses vast lights to dazzling effect in her own home. ‘ Oversized lamps create the perception of height because the eye is drawn upwards. it’s one of the most effective ways to make your room feel taller. When you enter a room, you want it to read like a cityscape with different heights,’ she says.
Her huge mud-beaded chandelier is on sale from £2,005, abigailahern.com. That’s not cheap but Rockett St george is another good resource for lights that won’t hide under a bushel. Their industrial film floor lamp with red shade is playful (£200, rockettstgeorge.co.uk) while their large artisan tete table lamp, £300, has a flicky straw shade.
Feature walls are long gone. Now the trend is for entire rooms to be adorned with bold, exotic prints.
‘Designers are bored with plain finishes — boldness is back. Floors are covered in large, patterned rugs, and grand statement pieces of furniture are increasingly popular,’ says Brady.
Nick Acaster, managing director of Rugs Direct, agrees. ‘Over the past year we have seen the demand for larger rugs increase by 60 per cent, and daring prints are definitely more popular,’ he says. Try the Asiatic Liberty Matrix Rug, £439, rugsdirect.
Artists such as Natasha Jade are seeing increased interest in paintings so large they’ll fill an entire wall.
‘Clients might have white walls and want a big painting to cover one,’ she says. Her luminous paintings often end up being the inspiration for the colour scheme ( artbynatashajade.
Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at Saatchi Art, an international online art gallery, says that the number of large sculptures sold has also gone up substantially. ‘ i think customers are feeling more adventurous. Buying big sculptures for the home or garden is an emerging phenomenon,’ she says. See saatchiart.com.
Whatever shall we do to cool down? the answer, after one of the longest heatwaves on record, is to jump into a swimming pool. For the lucky people who own one, that is.
Many are the years in which the cost and nuisance of owning a pool — extracting all those leaves that blow into it — can seem to outweigh the pleasure it gives. Not in 2018. those of us who don’t own swimming pools are nakedly envious of those who do.
Swimming became a recreation only in the 19th century. Until then, it had been used — by the romans and others — for military purposes. however, our own royal Navy was slow to catch on, and it was only in 1879 that an ability to swim became a requirement of entering the service.
During the Georgian period, bathing was practised at fashionable spas and seaside resorts, primarily for the good of one’s health; patients were dunked, in the manner of doughnuts, by bathing attendants.
a harbinger of the sport to come was the construction, in 1743, of the Peerless Pool in North London — the ‘ first verifiable swimming pool in england about which records still survive,’ according to Christopher Love in a Social history Of Swimming In england, 1800-1918. the word ‘ pool’ is indicative. It suggests a sylvan activity.
recently, a number of pool designers such as Michael Littlewood have returned to the rustic theme by introducing ‘ natural swimming pools’ to the market; a natural swimming pool being one with chemical-free water in a setting that looks like a pond. If you favour the natural aesthetic, avoid buying a fibreglass pool, as you won’t get much choice of shape.
a poured or sprayed concrete pool takes longer to install (two to four months), but gives the imagination free rein. Yet these are only two of a spectrum of possibilities, which include stainless steel and insulated panels (good for retaining heat).
as Louise Winterbourne of Savills, Cobham, says: ‘Swimming pool design has come on leaps and bounds over the years, with colourful tiles and kidney- shaped pools being phased out and replaced by lane pools, infinity pools and even pools beneath moving floors if space is tight.
‘all tend to be finished with contemporary lines and tiles that complement the property’s interior design and architecture. Glass pools are popular, as are underwater pool windows similar to those in exclusive holiday resorts.’
even before this scorching summer, Britons spent £500 million on domestic pools each year, according to the Swimming Pool and allied trades association Limited (Sparta).
according to Sparta’s Sallie LeslieGolding: ‘Costs vary depending on the location and the types of pool, starting from hundreds of pounds for the most basic splasher pool, to about £15,000 for a top-of-the-range, above-ground pool kit; an average of £35,000 for a liner pool; in the region of £50,000 for a fully-tiled, reinforced concrete pool; and larger projects that could cost in excess of £100,000.’
But be warned when getting a quote: pool companies usually price up the cost of providing the pool, but not the associated ground works. Since these include the cost of digging the hole for the water to go in, they can be expensive, depending on the site. When pool designers Clear Water revival carried out an undercover survey of ten leading pool companies, they found that a family pool would not leave much change from £80,000 plus vat — exclusive of ground works. then, as the financially challenged Katie Price has discovered, maintenance costs aren’t for the faint-hearted; the swimming pool at her home in West Sussex is now out of action. Sophisticated, individually designed pools are a serious investment, made after considerable thought on the part of the owner; they tend to be long-term projects, rather than the product of a single heatwave. On the plus side, groundsource heating and photovoltaic panels, once installed, have hugely reduced the cost of heating pools in recent years. energy efficiency can make a real difference when it comes to selling your house, too: a pool that’s expensive to run could be off-putting. Indoor pools are a more reliable asset than the outdoor variety, because the owner can exercise in them throughout the year. ‘a home could see up to 10 per cent added to its value if it has an indoor pool,’ says Louise Winterbourne.