How To Renovate

EP49 Unexpected Places To Find Renovation Inspiration

• Tash South • Season 1 • Episode 49

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Renovation inspiration doesn’t always have to come from a screen. It doesn't have to come from Pinterest and Instagram and TV, useful as they may be sometimes!

In this episode, I want to help you explore other places and ways to get that inspiration for your home.

Seeing something on a screen and trying to copy it can look, well, copied. I find that best design ideas come from unexpected places, and sometimes the smallest things can spark the best ideas.

So let’s get into it and look more closely at the things we experience, the tiny details we overlook, and the moments that make us feel something. Let’s look beyond the usual sources.

Finding your unique design and personality for your home amid the endless scroll of perfectly curated Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards can feel impossible. But hit play to find out where to look to find those little details that may just spark the big idea to bring your personality in your home design.
 
 Join me inside for tips on creating a rich, layered home that suits you!
 
 Ready to discover what inspires you? I’ll see you inside!

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Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant.
Each episode of How To Renovate is short, but brimming with practical advice to help you manage your renovation project with confidence and success.

Grab some more renovation advice & free resources and become part of the South Place Studio Renovation Community at
https://www.southplacestudio.com/freebies

Everything I teach about renovation falls within my Five Pillar Process for A Successful Renovation, to learn more about the process, head to
https://www.southplacestudio.com/pillars


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Tash South:

Hello, hello, hello everybody. It's Tash here and welcome back to the how to Renovate podcast. Today I thought we would talk about some unusual places to find inspiration for your renovation projects. Now, lots of times when I have clients they are quite unsure about what they want their home's style to be, and I think that's usually because what's out there is quite overwhelming. So when you look at Pinterest and Instagram and all the home magazines that are out there now, plus all the home renovation TV shows that are out there, I I mean it's information overload, inspiration overload, I should say there's just so much out there. So I find that people find it really hard to kind of settle on what they love because, you know, our attention's being grabbed and taken in so many different directions and ways. So I think people find it difficult to kind of try and just find what really they want their home to look like and what means something to them. So I thought I'd do an episode on this.

Tash South:

So let's get into the episode, because I do think that your inspiration doesn't always have to come from a screen. It doesn't have to come from Pinterest and Instagram and TV. You know there are other places you can get that inspiration, for that maybe means even more to you than just seeing something on a screen and trying to copy it. So let's look more into the experiences we have, perhaps the little details that we overlook every day in our lives, or those moments that mean something to us or that create memories. I think those are much better places to look for inspiration than just on the screen. Of course, you can still use the screen, but I just think that if you start somewhere from a more real place, then your home will just feel more yours, more authentic, and also just have more personality as well. So let's get into the episode.

Tash South:

So number one is travel, or dream destinations. So I do actually talk about this a lot, because I do think it's a great way to add personality into your home is to take your experience through life, through travel, and bring those memories back into your home in some sort of way, and it doesn't have to be a big statement. It can be little things, perhaps little trinkets or things that you've picked up along your travels, perhaps a little drawing from a street artist, perhaps a ticket or a poster from something you might have seen or done in that place, so it can be as small as that, or it also can be a lot bigger. So, for example, let's take a Parisian apartment. You could take the inspiration from the mouldings and the ornate cornicing. You could take the feeling. If you're lucky enough to have high ceilings, you could kind of create that feel in your own home using intricate mouldings or cornicing, for example. Or perhaps you want to go more earthy. Perhaps you love italy, I love italy. We've been to italy almost every single holiday for a few years now. So perhaps it's a tuscan villa, so perhaps those earthy tones or that more rustic feeling. So I think you can see where I'm going here. Or perhaps it's a more kind of modern feel. Perhaps it's a hotel in Tokyo that is more minimalist, with clean lines and focuses more on materials. So you can easily pull elements like textures, colours, layouts from these places to kind of recreate in your home. So you could pull elements from these places that made you feel like you did when you were there, or the feeling that you would like to create in your home. You can pull those and use some of those elements into your own home to create that similar feel.

Tash South:

And then the next one, number two, is cinema and art. Now, I love this one. So actually very recently, just in 2025, I've promised myself that I would try my best to find the time every week to go and see a film at the cinema. Busy, and especially as working mothers, we rarely take time for ourselves and I think, also as a creative person, I sometimes get so stuck in to the routine and the day-to-day and I forget to take that time to just be able to turn your brain off for a little while, because I think that really sparks creativity. So I love this idea of using the cinema as inspiration. I can tell you for sure that since I've been doing this this year, my ideas are definitely better. I feel like the ideas are coming more easily once I've kind of taken that time. Sometimes I'm sitting there and in the middle of the film an idea will come to me and I have to sneak my phone out so that the light doesn't disturb anybody and quickly note it down.

Tash South:

But I just think that cinema and art are such an amazing place to draw inspiration from if you're feeling a bit at a loss of where to start. I mean, films just have so much money spent on them, so the making of them, the places that they are filmed in can be incredible. The um properties that they are filmed in can be incredible. I mean there are just so many iconic film homes. I mean even on TV there are iconic properties, aren't there like Friends or Sex in the City? We know those places inside out and I think we can kind of do that in the same way with cinema. We can kind of go and be let into these places that we will probably never see in real life. But you can get a glimpse into it, into these amazing homes, and you can draw your inspiration from there. And it doesn't always have to be as obvious as looking at a property. It can be from the way a film is shot, from the lighting, from the mood of it. So all of these things could really be points of inspiration for your own home design or your own home renovation.

Tash South:

I mean films create entire worlds, from colour, composition, mood. So why not use them as design inspiration? I mean they just have the best people, the best creators in the world working on films that will be there forever. So you know, use them. Use them to inspire your project. You might just find something really unique and amazing that you love, that you want to bring into your own home. Take a Wes Anderson film, for example, all those examples of symmetry that is something you could bring in. And then the colours. The colours of the Wes Anderson films are usually amazing as well Pinks, greens, green and brass together. Or perhaps it's a period drama, so you're thinking layering antiques, deep colours, dramatic lighting. Or perhaps it's an Italian romance film, so you want the warm, earthy tones, a Mediterranean feel, a sun-drenched feel, a kind of rustic kitchen. So you can see how all these films can be a really, really fun way to kind of play with your design and just kind of go through that phase of, you know, finding your inspiration and then developing it into how you want to bring that into your own home.

Tash South:

And then art oh my goodness, I have worked on projects where we have created a whole room on one piece of art that the client loved. So if there's a piece of art that you may already have or that you have seen in a gallery that could inspire your color palette, the shapes that you choose for your furniture or for the moldings or for the taps, there's just so many ways you can bring that inspiration of art into your home. And then, moving on to number three, the everyday. So everyday objects and little unexpected details can be really inspiring. Now, actually, inside Renovercity, my renovation course, I do a whole lesson on how I found one seashell on the beach. I took a photo of it and then I talked through how I developed the colours and the undulations and the shapes of that seashell into an entire scheme for a living room.

Tash South:

So you could take just an everyday object that you love or that you found. It could be something really simple, like a ceramic plate. Perhaps it's a plate that was handed down to you from your grandmother or your grandparents, perhaps it's something that you really love and it's got that sentimental value to it. So wouldn't that be an amazing thing to draw your inspiration from? Perhaps it's got certain colours, certain patterns, perhaps it's got a mixture of things that you could play around with and bring into your own home. So these little everyday objects are really unexpected ways, unusual places.

Tash South:

You can find inspiration for your home and then also think about those unexpected details. It could be, you know, something really simple, like going into a cafe or restaurant, and I think again the same as with the cinema restaurants have the most incredible interior designers sometimes working on them and putting those together. So they're an amazing place to steal ideas from, because someone's already designed that for you to look at, for you to enjoy, for you to experience. So why not use that to draw inspiration from? Because if it's designed well and it feels good, you kind of know already that it's going to work. So I always say, kind of think about these things and the work and the time and the work and the time and the effort and the money that's gone into them to get them looking a certain way, making them a certain way, so that you have a positive experience being in the space or watching the film or looking at the art, and then kind of take those to inspire you for your home. So perhaps in a restaurant you'd look at the little details. If there's somewhere you really enjoy being and you just feel good when you go in there, take the time to look at the tiny little details that someone's taken the time and effort to put together. So this could be the materials they've selected, the colour pairing, so the colour palette which colours have they put together? Which colours have they put together with which metals? Maybe look at little details whether it's trim or the colour of the brassware they've chosen, perhaps patterns if they've used wallpaper or textures. So really like, take photos, take little notes if you're looking to renovate and you're a bit stuck for inspiration, because you can take these and perhaps add them onto your own style board and then you can be inspired from that. So I always say, just go out there, take a look and just take some time to notice those little details.

Tash South:

And then another really fun one number four is music and mood. So music is a really unusual place to find interior inspiration from, isn't it? But if you just think about it, you know music makes us feel a certain way and we can also feel a certain way by organising or creating our surroundings to make us feel that way. So hopefully that makes sense. But let me try and give you some examples.

Tash South:

So let's say you're struggling for inspiration and perhaps you love jazz. Now, I'm not a musician, before we get into into this too deeply but you know jazz is kind of rich, it's layered, you know it can be quite elegant. So if you just think about the words that you would associate with that type of music and then you can relate those two materials, two colours. So, for example, jazz. It's kind of a rich sound, so perhaps you can use rich colours, like deep, dark colours, and it's layered. So maybe you can think about textures in that way. You can layer your textures, make it feel kind of sumptuous, rich a place you can just sink down and relax and kind of feel really relaxed and calm in. And then jazz can also be quite elegant. So maybe that can influence the shape of your sofa or the shape of the side tables. You could even go so far as to think about the instruments used to play that particular type of music. So if you think about a saxophone, for example, the shape of that, perhaps you could bring that into your design. So I really do love this one. You can go wild on this one and you can choose some really interesting types of music and you know who knows what inspiration you might find. You might just have this amazing spark and come up with something that you really love to add into your home.

Tash South:

And then, moving on to number five, another one of my favorites is vintage antiques and historic architecture. So so I do talk about this quite a lot as well on the podcast about looking to your property's history, if you're lucky enough to have a property that's loaded with character, that's got you know, some good bones to work with. Then I think looking to your historic architecture is a great thing to do for inspiration, because that can inspire your renovation. How you add things into your home in terms of the shapes, the detailing, things like cornicing, architrave, door heights, window shapes, arches, all those kinds of things can be really influenced by the historic architecture. And I think I've also said before in the podcast, it doesn't always have to be just your home, perhaps it's your wider area is a really great place to find inspiration as well. But I think that that history of the architecture is a lovely one and also you don't always have to carry it through exactly. You know. You don't feel like, because you have an older property, that it has to be traditional or it has to be historic.

Tash South:

If you're keeping the bones, you know true to that history, you can then play around with the other elements to bring in a more modern feel. You can mix things up a bit. Perhaps you can even you know, with the help of this episode, find a completely new way of combining and blending those two together for your individual inspiration and your unusual place to find inspiration. Perhaps you can blend it with something else that you love that's more modern. And then, of course, vintage and antiques. Now, these are great like not only for the environment. I love finding vintage pieces and mixing them in with new. So I live in quite a new property was finished in 2018, which were built from scratch, and so I love adding a few vintage and more characterful pieces into the home. I also played around with the architecture here, so instead of just all flat ceilings and walls, I added exposed beams, exposed brickwork, wooden floors for the warmth and, above, character. So you can use all of these elements together the vintage, the antique and bring them into your space. Perhaps if your home is a bit lacking in character, then they're actually great for looking to, for inspiration, and you can bring those in and still keep some of the modern elements, and they can work really beautifully together. So that nicely brings us to the end of the episode.

Tash South:

Everybody, your home really should feel like an extension of you. It should reflect your personality and your families, because you're the ones that live there, and it needs to make you feel good. So don't just rely on the trends. Try and seek out some of these more unusual places to get that inspiration from. I just think you know your home is your sanctuary. You know life is hard. You've got to go out there, got to go to work every day. Just everything feels like a battle, especially at the moment. Um, here in 2025. You know, at some points I feel like we're going backwards and it's just. I feel like your home needs to be this really special place, this precious place that you and your family can come back to at the end of every day and just feel like it recharges you and it reminds me of who you are, so you can get up again tomorrow morning and do it all again. So I just hope that you can find some inspiration for your renovation. That's not just to do with the lovely pictures we see on screens, but actually something that means something to you. But I really hope that you enjoyed this episode and I will see you in the next one. Bye for now. Have a good week.

Tash South:

For more information on my five pillar process for successful renovation, you can go directly to southplacestudiocom forward slash pillars, where you'll find an introduction to the process which covers each of the pillars and what they cover. We also have a number of other free renovation resources. Go now to southplacestudiocom forward slash freebies. I have created some amazing freebies for you there. There is one on the process, like we just said. There is one on planning permission, there is one on kitchen design, there is another one on lighting planning. Go and check those out. There's so much free information there to help you with your renovation.