Clash of titans the
Hosts of The Great Indoors podcast, Sophie Robinson and Kate Watson-Smyth, were in Dublin recently to thrash out the big interior design issues of the day. Jess O Sullivan spoke to them
The Great Indoors is a podcast that celebrates all things interiors, hosted by TV presenter and designer Sophie Robinson and best-selling author and journalist Kate Watson-Smyth . They were in Dublin recently to record a special episode, where they discussed the hottest interiors topics of the day, including the great cushion debate: exactly how many is too many? Other subjects covered were how to work clashing prints and colour in your living room using cushions, curtains and upholstery or what is known as ‘the look and feel’ in the interiors industry.
If you are not a regular listener of the podcast, the two friends and interiors experts have very different styles and opinions. Kate favours a minimalist approach to colour and pattern, whereas Sophie describes her house as a riot of colour and clash. Needless to say, the conversation is always lively.
Sophie: For me upholstery is what really brings a scheme alive because I’m a massive fabrics person. I love clashing patterns and colour, mixing texture. I have got a complete cushion problem. If there was an AA for cushions I would have to sign up. I think at last count I had nine scatter cushions on my sofa, so myself, my husband and the dog are perfectly supported as we watch our box sets.
Kate: We are the opposite at home. We have three cushions on the sofa and I got some little ones and put them on – so three larger ones and three smaller ones and I thought they looked really nice. Then my husband walked in and said, ‘Bloody Instagram’ and took them off.
Sophie: But I get asked a lot, about how do you mix them? People often collect them. And you don’t want them all matching really. There are two ways to do it. There’s a co-ordinated look if you’re that way inclined. For example, if you’re using a tonal colour palette, or a neutral, you could mix your colours that way. Having one colour palette or a very limited colour palette makes it very easy to mix patterns.
Make sure you have things with lots of lovely different textures like velvet, linen and silk, in order to create the contrast, otherwise it will look really flat and boring.
Kate: That’s if you’re in the neutral zone. But I like a complete riot on my sofa. The more clashing and bashing the better. I don’t buy all my cushions in one go, I collect them.
Sophie: But the way you can start mixing patterns – florals, stripes, geometrics – works if you have different scale. Some nice big blousy florals with gingham or tight geometrics. I don’t think there’s any limit to how many patterns you can have – I’d say three minimum if you’re going for this look. But one tip to make it not look like you just walked into a charity shop is to have a bit of a cohesive colour palette going on. So you might have one hero fabric, like a fabulous chintz, and that might have all your colours in there, and you can extract those out to mix with the other patterns just so they do pull together.
Kate: I like to do it the other way, so I might go for a really bold patterned sofa and have plain dark cushions to bring it down. Another trick is that if you’re in a small space and if you have your sofa matching the colour of the wall behind you, that can make the room look bigger.
Sophie: I am a fan of a patterned sofa, and we are going to be seeing lots more bold floral, jazzy printed sofas soon. Then you can be like me and pile more pattern on top of that, or be like Kate and add the plain. If you find a patterned sofa too big an investment, buy a patterned, upholstered footstool. I prefer this to a coffee table as it gives you an opportunity to add another pop of colour. Then I add a large tray or a pile of books to create surfaces to make it a bit more practical.
Kate: Windows are another way to bring patterns into a room. With blinds, you can always mix striped with florals. So if you’ve got lots of patterned cushions with plain cushions you can bring stripes in on the windows, say with Roman blinds.
Sophie: I have stripes on my windows, curtains but not blinds. However, I love a Roman blind and one of the reasons is that you don’t need a lot of fabric. So if you’ve fallen in love with a fabric that’s really expensive, you could either make a cushion out of it, or create a really amazing Roman blind. If you were to create a curtain out of that fabric you would be into telephone numbers before you knew it. I tend to use my really luxe designer fabrics as a blind. In my house I’ve got three large windows, so what I did was buy cheap ready-made curtains and then sewed two pairs together to get the width. They came with eyelets, the bit that goes on the round metal pole, but personally I don’t like eyelets because they just look a bit too contemporary for the style of my house and also I find them really awkward to draw – they get stuck. So I dropped them off at the seamstress, who cut off the eyelets, put in a pencil pleat and it was so cheap to do.
Kate: If you’re doing curtains you have to do them generously, that’s the key to a curtain. You’ve got to have enough material in it to make it look generous, so quite often blinds are a good idea. My granny used to say, “You must never, ever buy velvet curtains because they will never wear out and you will never have an excuse to buy new ones.” Cheap ready-made curtains all the way and then you can change them when you’re bored.
Sophie: Another important thing is length. You cannot stop the curtains just above the radiator. You’ve got to have the curtains down to the floor. If you put a blind with them, then you can have the blind closed if you have the radiator on, and when the room is warm, close them up.
Kate: Long curtains make a room look more furnished, more elegant, and not like you’ve run out of money. If you can’t have curtains then just have blinds instead.