Episode 17 - Finding Your Style

In today's episode, Kate and Jenny help you to find your interior style. You know what you like and you have pictures, but you're not sure exactly how to pull it all together in your own space. Kate and Jenny will take you through some tips and tricks to get that professional look. 

Topics Referenced

• 7 Principles of Interior Design
• Creating Style Boards
• Canva 
• Google Slides / PowerPoint
• Mad About the House by Kate Watson-Smyth
• The Great Indoors Podcast by Kate Watson-Smyth and Sophie Robinson
• "Something New, Something Old, Something Black, Something Gold" - advice from Kate Watson-Smyth
• Farrow and Ball - Colour Card
• https://coolors.co/ - Colour Palette Generator
• Image Interiors (magazine)
• IHIL - Irish Homes Interiors and Living (magazine)

Transcript

Episode 17 - Finding Your Style

 [00:00:00] You are listening to rip it up the renovations podcast. 

Kate: hi, I'm Kate. I run the Instagram page, @victorianrathmines 

Jen: Rathmines. And I'm Jenny. I run the Instagram account, @workerscottage.

Kate: This podcast is all about renovation and interiors from the renovator's perspective. We've been through it a few times between us and it hasn't scared us off. In fact 

Jen: we loved it so if you are planning to do up your own home you can expect to hear lots of advice from our own experience along with plenty of tips and inspiration. 

In today's episode, we're going to help you. find your interior style. You know, what you like and pictures, but you're not sure exactly how to pull it together in your own space. Kate and Jenny will take you through some tips on how to pull it all together and some tricks to get that professional look.

Jenny: Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Kate. Hi, Jen. We're in season two. It's fully back after our lovely summer holidays. And we're on episode 17 of the [00:01:00] podcast. Thank you so much to everyone who's been listening so far. We love doing these. And we just love, and 

Kate: some lovely feedback recently. Yeah. Someone messaged me recently and said it was the best interior slash renovation podcast they ever heard.

If you think that, please message us and let us know because we 

Jenny: love hearing it. So thank you everyone who's been listening, who's been sending messages or asking questions. We're loving it. But also, if you think we're missing 

Kate: a trick, or we stink, tell us that too. And how we can get better. Yeah. What topics should we cover?

What should we do? Yeah. We're always open to feedback. Always open to feedback. I 

Jenny: love when people message me and say, would you do an article on this? Would you do a podcast episode on this? It's just great to be able to give people what they want, you know? Okay. So on that topic, what we're talking about today, one kind of a bit of an amalgamation of things that we get lots of questions on.

Yeah. Which is really just around like finding your own style, developing your own style, putting a look together, translating what you've seen on Pinterest and Architectural Digest and Instagram and everything into an actual room. Like [00:02:00] how do you do that? Yeah. Probably first things first is that it's really hard.

That's why being a good interior designer is really hard And so working with somebody is always a great idea, but there are some tips guidelines that can help 

Kate: Yeah, I have A million Pinterest points for myself, for clients, whatever, but I have a million of them. But then sometimes I've pinned something so long ago that when I go back into it, I'm like, why did I like this picture?

And it might've been like a detail of the picture as opposed to the overall feel of the picture or something. But I've kind of lost it in time. Like, I don't even know why I pinned this. Like, I don't even like it now that I look back. I like 

Jenny: that light switch. 

Kate: This then kind of reminds me, It's great to have Pinterest boards, but you also need to kind of bring them all together somewhere, whether that's a mood board or whatever.

But we might get into that a little bit of detail, detail later. Yeah. 

Jenny: Okay. I have these kind of principles. So if you look into the world of interior design, At a high level, there's typically seven principles. Sometimes you'll see eight or nine or even [00:03:00] ten, depending on who's kind of putting the guide together.

But there's seven that I always stick to and I love it. And I think it's really helpful to go through them. And actually, if you're somebody who's, you know, in the process of putting together what you like and wondering how to translate it to real life, what can be really good is to look through Photos of very well done rooms or homes and try to be like, where have I, you know, where have they applied that principle or where have they done that?

And why, you know, try to understand like, why identifying it yourself. What do I like about it? What looks good here? So, I'm going to go through them. Okay. First one is proportion and scale. So this is fairly straightforward. Make sure that the stuff that you're putting into the space suits the size of the space.

So if you have really tall ceilings, for example, long chandeliers or pendant lights or high mirrors or something like that. Big lamps. Big, huge lamps. Tiny lamps. Look stupid if you have large ceilings. Don't put entirely dull furniture into a huge room or into any room. And not only that, but that the items that you're putting in.

are balanced in relation to each [00:04:00] other. So you don't have this one big honking, hulking sofa in the middle of the room and then all these little tiny chairs. Like, they need to, they need to be in the right scale and proportion to each other. So, fairly straightforward if that makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense for sure.

The next thing is balance. So this is quite similar to scale and there's a few different types of balance. This is, this is the, That the items that you're putting across the room are balancing each other out. Yeah. So you don't have something massive on one side of the room and then something that's a completely different, whatever, shape, size, et cetera, on the other side.

There's a few ways of doing this. One is that you just have, for example, if you can think of, you know, two sofas opposite a coffee table and they're just mirroring each other, so that's like mirrored balance. One is asymmetrical. So you might have one large sofa. Maybe faced with two armchairs, but overall they make up.

Roughly the same size as each other, if that makes sense. Yeah. The two marbles together are roughly the same size as the sofa. And then there's something called radial, which is where you have something in the middle and then you have items coming out [00:05:00] from it in slightly either diminishing or increasing scales.

So you could have How does that work? Like a dining table coming out from it? Yeah, that's perfect in a dining room. So you have like a big dining table in the middle of the dining room and then you have slightly smaller and smaller pieces of furniture coming out from it. And you have lesser pieces. Like an atom.

In the outer. That's, yeah. 

Kate: But actually the balance one is really key. This is actually 

Jenny: a science podcast, you really know. 

Kate: We are both kind of nerds at the end of the day. 

Jenny: We're huge nerds. Excuse me, kind 

Kate: of. I'm a math nerd. I'm definitely a math nerd. So the balance one is actually key and do you know where this kind of comes in?

I think there was, there was a bit of a There's a trend of buying kind of always a suite of furniture, 3, or whatever, and like It always. It's imbalanced. It's really imbalanced and it doesn't really work. But also I don't know if I want three, two big three seaters taking over my whole room. So I always think like a three seater like you said facing two armchairs that make up the same length but maybe a little table in between or a three facing a two and the two has an end table [00:06:00] or a big lamp beside it or something and it makes that exactly like you said a square and balances the two sides.

I think that's So key 

Jenny: yeah, and you can cluster things just like you said and that applies to lots of things for example If you're doing you know a picture wall or shelf styling or something like that. Think about the overall outline of the group of things that you're putting together. That's the total size, even if there's kind of gaps between them or something like that.

Yeah. 

Kate: So a big lamp behind an armchair and a big window or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the overall outline of those things. But a lamp in the middle on its own by window just looks stupid. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jenny: Yeah. That doesn't make total 

Kate: sense. 

Jenny: Then number three is unity. You'll also see this written down as harmony sometimes.

So this is where you sum kind of commonality throughout the house. Normally this might be even things as basic as like skirting boards, for example, or maybe your base wall color is the same, or maybe you have some kind of recurring fabric, you know, flooring is one. Maybe you have recurring pattern throughout the house.

It's just something that ties the space together. So [00:07:00] you don't have this completely disjointed style in every room that you go into, which is kind 

Kate: of, I don't know, unsettling. I also think the continuity makes a space seem more seamless, but also seem bigger if it's a smaller space. So that continuity, like in our house at the moment, it's a bit of a mishmash until we renovate, but like the skirting, like you said, isn't matched everywhere.

And where they've added on extra bits, there's different skirting. There's a square skirting and then there's the old You know, old molded kind of Taurus one in another part of the house. And it feels like every time you see something different, you're like, Oh, it's another area. Oh, it's another area. And it's jutty outputs and you don't get that continuity of space.

And I think it does. It breaks your line of sight. It makes rooms feel like truncated or whatever. So I think it's key and it can be done in physical things, like your skirting, like you said, and your floor or whatever. But could also done with your color palette. 

Jenny: Yeah. And I think it is more the background things because we don't want everything to be the same.

at all. We'll come back to that. But it's the things that are, fade more [00:08:00] into the background like your skirting or maybe your, you know, your main wall color or the style of your doors or and door handles and maybe light switches. Those types of things. Have at least a common style. Yeah. If not a nice flow for sure.

Yeah. Then, I love this one. Rhythm is number four. So this is really about repetition. Slightly different to unity. This is if you have, my favorite way of thinking about this is that rule of three and we've spoken about it on this podcast before. If you're using, for example, a pop of color or you're using a really unusual fabric or just something kind of bold and, bright or a bit more out there repeat the color.

So I think the example I used in our last episode was my couch is yellow, turmeric yellow. And I've picked that up through yellow cushions over in the dining area, through some yellow accents in my kitchen. So 

Kate: have you. You know, it's not completely isolated. Exactly. It's even in like some little pops in your artwork or you know, yeah Yeah, it's a really great way of tying everything [00:09:00] together then.

Jenny: Yeah, exactly. So that could be as well to a pattern So if you have you know bold wallpaper in a room or it's certain fabric that's draped over a sofa, like repeat that a couple of times. Maybe it's stripes, you know, it doesn't have to be the exact same color and the exact same shape, but maybe stripes are your thing and you have like a stripey something or other and it's picked up somewhere else.

So rule of three is a really good one for, for rhythm and that the brain loves that when there's just a bit of repetition throughout and you're like, Oh, I've seen 

Kate: that before. You don't know why I think sometimes when you go into another room and you see that again or another part of the house and you see that again, you don't know why it looks good, but you're like, It's because your brain has seen it before.

Yeah. I just think, yeah, again, it's that. Yeah. Another word actually for 

Jenny: me that I have done rhythm wise is is the wall paddling. in my house. So my kitchen, the kitchen cupboard doors are paneled with vertical panels. I have the same in the downstairs bedroom. It's a different color, but it's the same.

I have the same in the upstairs bedroom and they're all different colors. They're all in different places, but the [00:10:00] brain loves that. I've seen this before. This belongs here, you know. Then emphasis is number five. So this is having a focal point in every room. I think this isn't a feature wall. Please don't have a feature 

Kate: wall.

Jenny: Please don't have a feature wall. Accent wall, they're dead. Just let them die. 

Kate: And don't put your TV into a wall. Because your TV will, you'll outgrow your TV in a few years probably. And you'll probably get a new TV and then you'll have a hole in your wall to fit that TV. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: We spoke about this in our layouts episode I think it was.

I think A focal point. A really contentious focal point for me in my living room is our TV. But you have the right TV. We have the frame TV. Which is really bizarre. But some people are like, that should never be a focal point. 

Jenny: So, yeah. But the Samsung frame TV is actually art. 

Kate: Because you mostly have art out there, unless you're 

Jenny: actually watching the television.

Well, 

Kate: it's mostly fucking Peppa Pig at the moment, actually. Not 

Jenny: technically art. Could it be considered art? We'll let the cultural historians battle that one out in a few years time. [00:11:00] But yeah, have a focal point. So, we spoke about this before. This could be, for example, having a really dramatic backsplash in your kitchen or countertop, this could be having a really bright colored sofa and some accent armchairs.

This could be like a really dramatic dining table but like decide in each room, what is your focal point? And then how are you designing around that? And if there are too many 

Kate: focal points or things vying for your attention, I'd say it becomes confusing, like not very settling, I think when you go into space.

Yeah. So if you've really, really, I don't know, mad color kitchen doors, and then you have mad marble as well on. Is it too much? Is it too much? Yeah. So it's one or the other kind of thing. 

Jenny: You'll see it on the Uploading to Irish House's Instagram page. It's 

Kate: on my Instagram page. I don't know. A good example of this is like the high gloss red kitchens that had a bit of a moment I think in the noughties and then a glittery granite top.

I mean, class. It looks like a disco. A lot went down around 

Jenny: the turn 

Kate: of the millennium. I know, 

Jenny: yeah, yeah. She'd never be [00:12:00] repeated. Yeah. Okay, we're nearly there. Number six is contrast. This is pretty simple. It could be a colour or it could be a texture. But the brain loves contrast. It makes everything feel deeper, more interesting.

Things grab your attention a little bit more. So, contrast. So this could be bringing in just a richer, deeper color, even through your cushions on your kitchen sofa or your door handles or just accent vases or something like that. Bring in some deep, rich color contrast. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Jenny: Could just be black. 

Kate: I like that actually in throw cushions.

I think it's a lovely way of changing up a whole space. Like I see the ones you have in your banquette here, all the different patterns and stuff, but I have, One of my sofas, it's a kind of a grey old sofa that we have, but I have like three or four different types of back cushions of like a boucle one, then there's like a cotton velvet one and then there's a bit of a weave one.

And even though it's almost all the same color, that texture completely differentiates them and makes it look much better. 

Jenny: Like layering textures is something that the brain just absolutely loves. It's a way to just instantly make your house [00:13:00] feel more expensive, more interesting, more put together. Yeah, like a lovely big wool throw or like those really chunky knits throw over your microfiber or the velvet sofa like that's lovely something deep against something shallow like it all it's great so layer textures.

Curtains are another great way to do that like a really thick curtain fabric overlaid on top of a voil behind it for privacy like that we love that. Okay and the last one is on details. It's not very specific is it, but like just really pay attention to details, like taking something from good to great 

Kate: is in the detail.

And the details are different for everyone, right? So we spoke about this before in the kitchens episode, like I wanted some of the kind of joinery details in my kitchen. The dovetail joints. Yeah. But like that was just something that we kind of liked and say even in our butler's pantry when it was open, you could kind of see some of that woodworking detail and I loved that.

And those details are important. Absolutely. To some people like details like really fancy door handles. Yeah. Like a load of people went for Buster and [00:14:00] Punch, the knurled door handles and they were like crazy money but like that's the feature in their home or that's the detail that they love that elevates their home.

So I think it, your detail is something that's so personal that you love looking at every day. 

Jenny: And it's just making sure that something isn't ruining it. Like, you know, that your switches and sockets are neat and that the, Screws in them are covered over even by those little plastic inserts or something like that, but it's all you know 

Kate: Yeah, 

Jenny: it 

Kate: makes a difference.

I also think lighting is a great way to bring in details like Yeah, like lighting, it's just like how far can you go? Like, you know, you can go like as out there or as minimalist and kind of chic. And if you go real minimalist, you want real high quality. So it doesn't look cheap, you know? But then you can go total feature light as well.

Like that can be really cool. And it's almost art as well. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: Yeah. So that's cool. And it's 

Jenny: things like, you know wires just not being trailed across the living room. Like it's all the little. 

Kate: Cables. I know. Now, I have a techie husband and like, the [00:15:00] one thing I say to him, I'm like, I don't care how many Alexas you have around the house or how many speakers you have, I don't want to see cables.

Like, it's just, it's something that you should really consider early on, I think in a renovation as well. Yeah. It can really ruin a space. It can. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Kate: So that's it. 

Jenny: That's https: otter. 

Kate: ai 

Jenny: They're pretty straightforward, but what can be really good is, is, you know, if this is something that you really want to get good at, or you're thinking about doing up your own home, just have a look at like, really well put together rooms or houses or something like that on Instagram, on Pinterest, on, you know.

You know, in magazines and just look at like, what is good about that? Like, why is this jumping out at me? Is it like, have they used contrast really well? Have they repeated some fabrics or patterns somewhere? You know, what's the proportion and scale like in that image? Like try to identify it and you'll get really good through practice and learning how to put those things together yourself in your own house.

Kate: Yeah. And I think, so we all have Pinterest, right? We all love having all these kind of mood boards and stuff on our, Phone and in her hand or whatever on our computer, but I love interiors magazines. I love just sitting there [00:16:00] flicking through it. Do you have a favorite? I don't know if I want to call. I love image interiors is probably the one I go to a lot.

But I like so many of them for different reasons. Like I love, you know, I love different ones for different reasons, but I think the style I tend to kind of go toward more, but then I love the period property ones as well, sometimes for certain things. And I love the kitchen magazine. Anyway, I just love an interiors magazine.

But. What I love about interiors magazines, and this is a little tip I got, I did like this night course in interior design years ago in Galway. And she said, when you're flicking through magazines, don't just stack your magazines. If you love a picture, just rip it out of the magazine. And I was like, oh, but then like the magazine's ruined.

But also just rip out the ones you love. You're really committing to it. And then you have it in your hand and you're like, do I really like this as much? And maybe file it away. And then maybe you stick it on a physical board or you have a folder of kind of ones you've pulled together. By ripping it out of the magazine, it's more of a kind of a commitment to that image.

And then you're like, actually, I still love it. Actually, I'm going to keep this in my mood board or whatever. And then if you still love it after ripping it out of the magazine a week later or [00:17:00] whatever, and it's in that folder, then you really love it. And I think adding those kind of physical, maybe then you can snap it in a photograph and add it to a, you know, a mood board online if you want to.

But like, at least you've kind of, I don't know. I love that because you do 

Jenny: have to pick a style, right? And you can't really like, Oh, I want everything. And maybe if it's a mismatch at all together, like, No, you do have to narrow down, was it, I know, I think this quote is always attributed to Coco Chanel. I don't know if it was her, but something like, before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one item, you know, so like not including things or leaving things out and refining things down is as important as getting the right stuff in the first place.

Kate: And it's really hard because sometimes I look at like these kind of modernist kind of minimalist homes and I'm like, Oh, I love that. Doesn't it look so calm and look so beautiful. And then I stay in a hotel and I'm like, I love this luxury in my bedroom. So I'm like, which one is it? The opulence of this bedroom.

Yeah, but like these big high beds and a big, you know, headboard. And then I look at other ones that are like sleek, minimalist beds and I love those too. And then you have to kind of be realistic and be like, which one is better? Going to look the best in your house long [00:18:00] term. Yeah. Which one are you going to dress the bed in to look like that?

And it's probably going to be the minimalist one. Unless you have maids coming in, doing your beds like a hotel. With like 27 pillows and they're all arranged in like order of whatever. I always think like bathrooms and bedrooms are kind of a giveaway as to kind of what, what style you like, because both of them are kind of high or low maintenance, I think sometimes.

And it makes, it makes me commit to one side of the other, I think. And 

Jenny: of course it is fine to mix and match, but you know, in general, you need some level of cohesion. In terms of stuff. Definitely. You don't want like a King George III bathroom with like a throne toilet and a super innate mirror and then just this really bare living room.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's just dauntless. I think it 

Kate: has to, it has to start feeling cohesive at some point. So it's important, even if you're doing mood boards per room. Or Pinterest boards or whatever, if you're doing them per room, then you need to start pulling all those rooms, like a key image from each room, all on one overall house board.

And then you're like, Oh crap, it's a little crap together. And 

Jenny: you get that in magazines 

Kate: because you 

Jenny: generally get a tour of a house in a magazine. So you get a good few rooms pulled together and you [00:19:00] can see how they've done that and how they've, you know, not had everything bland and samey, but how they've worked in that cohesion and made the whole house come together.

The other thing is just the size of it. Because your phone is small, it's supposed to be on your iPad and then 

Kate: it's more true to color as well, print. I know. I mean, it's just not the same as the tactile of having it real. And maybe you go to a sofa shop and they give you a fabric swatch. So then you can pin that to your board.

Like, I just think it's more realistic. Even a cork board, if you buy a cheap cork board from whatever deals, Ikea, whatever, and pin some of the pictures and pin some of the fabrics. And then. That starts becoming a real life mood board, I think, as well. 

Jenny: Yeah. So now we're onto mood boards, and this is really important, because that is the critical step, isn't it?

Between seeing things you like on pictures and making it come to life in your house. So what are your top tips for mood boards? 

Kate: I don't know. I don't know if I have top tips. I use different things. Typically, I'd use Google Slides or Canva or something. Microsoft PowerPoint, if you're using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft Word Document And [00:20:00] I literally just copy and paste, you know, the images I have, crop the images if there's a particular detail I like. And then when I'm going to look at, like, particular items, whether it's a piece of lighting or a tap style or a knob for a door or something like that, I So I go and I copy the image or I press and hold the image on iPhone or remove the background and then add that into the, that outline.

That's a really good one. 

Jenny: So the Photos app on your iPhone, if you have any picture of, you know, a piece of furniture or something that you've seen online, if you press and hold the image, it takes the outline. Is that like copy sticker or something like that? Yeah, sticker, create 

Kate: sticker. But you can also just copy it and it'll, it'll take the outline.

It'll do this kind of like light up line around the perimeter of the item and then you can kind of copy that and then just paste it into your mood board and I just think it really elevates the mood board because you don't have this big white square around it that you're trying to kind of and you can overlay things really nicely then.

Jenny: Yeah and if you don't have iPhone I think you do it on your Android phone in Google Photos you go into like edit photo and it's removed background or something like that or if you're handy with with the Photoshop [00:21:00] or something like that you can do it there too. Yeah 

Kate: absolutely. There's a load of different apps.

The main thing is it doesn't matter what app you use, whatever one you're most comfortable with, they'll all do 

Jenny: enough for what you need. And digital is a good place to start because you can just, I think it's, there's an exploratory phase at the start of putting together a mood board where you should just throw in everything that catches your eye, I think, that you'd like the look of and then start refining it down and be like, what, what is sustaining your interest?

What are you, what works well together? And then what can you start scrapping? And then you can start building your kind of more complete. version and then I would take it offline and put up the cork board and the physical photos and all that. Yes, yeah, 

Kate: yeah, yeah. But say for example you're looking at a bathroom, right, and you've picked a particular tile and you've picked this lovely brass or chrome tap.

I know you wouldn't pick chrome tap, you know. I'm coming around to it now, you're really, you're really convinced me. But when you're putting those in the same mood board, if you're tiling floor to ceiling, make that tile in your mood board huge and make the tap small. That's 

Jenny: so important because sometimes you put a mood board together and [00:22:00] like.

You could have this big picture of a thing that's in your favorite color, but actually maybe it's a small armchair and it's not taking up enough space and it doesn't dominate the way you thought it would. So make sure that you're scaling all the little items to, you know, relative proportions to each other.

Yeah, exactly. Relative proportions. And you don't 

Kate: need to have the repeated tile across the whole wall. That tile, that colour it's going to be, make that big if it's going to be floor to ceiling. Same as your paint colour, sometimes I do, I just search whatever paint colour I'm thinking of using and use one of the Google image samples or whatever.

Like for some of them there might be like a drop of paint in the colour and I copy and paste that in. But then in some time, or some other cases I might use it as the background on the slide if it's going to be all the wall colour. 

Jenny: Great. And then 

Kate: everything starts to kind of look nice against it or not.

Jenny: Because you could end up choosing like this cool flooring sample that you've seen. But actually in real life then it might totally overwhelm the space and just not go with everything else. So yeah, it does need to be. 

Kate: Yeah, but that sticker thing I've been using a lot recently and the [00:23:00] way I've been kind of using ad sticker is one thing, one way of doing it.

But if you're searching, say an image for a sofa you like or a tap you like or whatever, Google. Go to Google images and pick the one that has a white background. It'll pick it the cleanest and it'll have a nice, you know, outline. Whereas sometimes if you try and pick say a picture of a sofa that's already in a room, it won't take the line of the sofa properly.

Gotcha. You know? Okay. So to remove the background properly, just try and pick a kind of a white background image or a very plain background image. It'll work better. Okay. Make it easy for the tech to put them in. Yeah, exactly. 

Jenny: There is one, quote that I always love as well. Like once you've kind of put your room together or your image, you know, your mood board of your room together Kate Watson-Smyth, who is one of my all time heroes, she's got a great blog called mad about the house.

She does a really good podcast with Sophie Robinson. Really just a wonderful person to follow. And her writing is fantastic as well on interiors. But, one thing she said in some, my interview or something somewhere years [00:24:00] ago, is every room should have something new, something old, something black and something gold.

I love this. Which can be interpreted kind of loosely, but what she means by having something new and something old means you don't have to go samey samey with everything, like don't do your entire room in Ikea, like layer in maybe some antique finds or something in a slightly different style, like you can mix and match a little bit.

Right? Yep. Then, something black, it's kind of back to that contrast point. It doesn't necessarily have to be black, it could be a navy or it could be a really rich burgundy or something, but just something that's like a bold, dark color, dot that around the place to add in a bit of interest. Or maybe it's something light, maybe your room's really dark, you know, like your lovely brick colored sofa, you've got light colored cushions on that and that's a lovely pop of contrast.

Yeah. And then by something gold, she means, not necessarily gold, but something, you know, You know, metallic, like make sure you're working metallics in somewhere. It doesn't have to overrun the room, but just, you know, it might even be a lamp or a light fitting or something like that. [00:25:00] And that tends to bring together a fairly, I love that.

It's very easy to remember as well. Something 

Kate: new, something old, something black and something gold. It's great. Yeah. That's brilliant. Thanks Kate. Well, it's great to have fun. Just super. Is there anything else you used to use for pulling together your style or mood boards early on? 

Jenny: I love Canva. Canva. I think it's so handy and I would do a different board for every room and just make sure it's all coming together.

The other thing I love is a website called coolers. co and it's a palette generator. So once you've picked maybe your primary color or your primary few colors, you can generate a palette and it just keeps going. pressing a button and it keeps generating new palettes. That's cool. And you can be like, Oh, I love that one.

And that will really help you pick, you know, your accent colors and some different things that you can layer in. 

Kate: Yeah. And we spoke about this, didn't we? In the colors and paint episodes you know, the spectrum of kind of shades of the same color that are on paint cards are really useful to kind of, you know, find things that will go well together or cohesive across the house.

So in our previous house, we had a lot of versions of that. [00:26:00] Column that was in the Farrow Ball 

Jenny: one. Oh yeah. So 

Kate: most of our common areas were like Shaded white and then our bedroom was actually drop cloth, which is a shade deeper again. And you know, like our woodwork was the lighter one or whatever. So like, I love that.

I just think it's, it's a really easy way. If you're unsure, if you're picking the right palettes across kind of paint, at least in your house, it's a good way of doing it, I think. It's brilliant. Yeah. So lots of different kinds 

Jenny: of shades of the same 

Kate: color, really. And it 

Jenny: It really ensures that all your undertones are matching and that you're on, yeah, you're on track.

Kate: But I also think. For me, like, I always kind of gravitate more towards stony kind of earthy colors in a house. I don't tend more toward kind of dewy colors, but like, I think they kind of go well together. It's kind of all earthy or kind of more those vivid colors. It depends what you're kind of after. I'm very much in the Dooley.

I love the Dooley. Yeah, but then you have a very kind of calm palette. Yeah, they do match. Yeah, you're right. They do. You have a very calm palette which anything will go against. Subtle comfort, I think. Yeah, subtle comfort. 

Jenny: Anything else you use? Any other [00:27:00] tools? 

Kate: I actually, for the odd time, if I want to do something really quick, I use Instagram stories, but then don't post the story.

Just save it as an image. 

Jenny: Talk to me about that 

Kate: now. So like, it's kind of, you can bring, you can bring images in as photos. So you create, you create an Instagram story and then, and then add images from your. So like if you've like 

Jenny: really quickly taken a load of screenshots or something like that. 

Kate: Okay.

Jenny: Gotcha. 

Kate: Take screenshots. And then download the story. Crop them. And then go into go into Instagram stories and just put them in that way. Add them as stickers, add them as, you know, the full images, cropped images, whatever you want. And you can layer them really easily without having to go into. a third party thing like canva or google slides or whatever but google slides i love it but i only use it on my laptop it's kind of crap on the phone okay for it 

Jenny: for canva i think canva is much better on the phone i love canva on my phone yeah 

Kate: i find some of them like it's very hard to pinch and crop and stuff When it's tiny on your phone, that's why I tend to [00:28:00] do more like four than my laptop.

It's 

Jenny: like there's too much functionality in it. Do you know? It's just too much to fit into one of the phone. And you only need the tiny sliver of functionality. Exactly. So it's not really 

Kate: worth it. But yeah, it's actually a really kind of quick and dirty way to pull together a mood board is Instagram stories, but just don't post your stories or do if you want to, whatever you do.

Do it. 

Jenny: And then you just have to put it into practice. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Jenny: After you have all that, after you have your mood board, after you've worked it all out, I think you have to just get hands on with just putting things somewhere. Okay, maybe a couch is a bit of a tall order for that, but you know, like all the little knick knacks, all the little accessories.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just have to 

Kate: practice and like see how it goes, do 

Jenny: you know? 

Kate: Yeah. You'll find your style just be confident with that I guess as well. Yeah. And like you said at the start, you know, start to identify what you like in pictures. Peace. 

Jenny: Have a critical eye. You know, yeah, just 

Kate: keep saying, why do I keep gravitating toward this one?

Or, like, you were talking about Mad About the House and Kate -Smyth, like, I've actually pinned a load of things from her on knowing it was her, like, on Pinterest. I'm like, oh, it's Mad About the House, oh, it's Mad About the House. [00:29:00] So she, like, tends to post, obviously, a specific style that I gravitate more toward.

Yeah. She has great taste. I just love her. Yeah. She is very good. Yeah. But like, yeah, I think knowing what you like in a picture versus, I just like that overall picture. Yeah. 

Jenny: It'll really help you. 

Kate: Yeah, I think it'll help you, you know, further your style and own your style a bit more as you go in.

Yeah, because 

Jenny: once you know why you like something and what you like about it, you can replicate that within your own, you know, maybe it's a different colour palette or a different shape or size or something like that, but you can replicate it once you know how it works. Yeah. Nerds!

Alright, I think that's it. I think Go forth and make a load of mood boards and just have fun with it. They can all be thrown out and started again. 

Kate: Exactly. It's the beauty of it. You can't get it wrong. Yeah. 

Jenny: . Okay. for listening. Talk to you soon, guys. See you in two weeks. Bye.

Jen: If you found that episode useful, please do us a huge favor by giving us a like, and a few stars and especially click that subscribe button. Thank you. [00:30:00]