Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday period and have enjoyed a great start to 2023 so far.
I’m back at my desk after two weeks off work, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into things and creating lots of new content. That said, there’s no denying January can be tricky. The excitement of Christmas is over, normal routines have returned, and we still have a couple of cold, dark months to get through before spring arrives. What’s more, our homes can feel very bare and stark now the festive decorations have been packed away for another year.
I always feel that a mini interiors refresh is a great antidote to the January gloom, and there are plenty of ways to spruce up your rooms without spending time or money on major renovations or redecorating projects. So, for my first post of 2023, here are 10 easy ideas to help you breathe new life into your home and create a calm, cosy and uplifting sanctuary for the rest of winter and beyond.
Try a different layout
Rooms always seem so much bigger in the first few days after the Christmas decorations come down, so it’s a great opportunity to look at how you use them with fresh eyes. Take a few minutes to analyse each area of your home and check for any awkward corners or day-to-day niggles that you’d like to fix – perhaps a piece of furniture that you constantly have to squeeze past, or a coffee table that’s too far from the sofa to reach comfortably. Also think about how you could make the layout better suit your wider needs. For example, if your living room is arranged around the TV but you’d like to encourage more conversation, you could try repositioning the seats so that they’re angled towards each other rather than the screen.
Once you have a potential arrangement in mind, you could use floor-planner software or a pen and paper to test it out, but sometimes I reckon it’s best just to go for it, live with it for a few days and see what happens. If you don’t like it, you can always move things back again or try something else.
Find more tips on devising the perfect layout for you here.
Create a focal point
While you’re playing around with layout, it’s worth ensuring every room has a focal point to draw the eye and ‘anchor’ the space. If there’s no obvious architectural feature such as a fireplace or a bay window, then you can create a focal point with furniture and accessories – perhaps a sideboard or console table, a gallery wall, a large mirror, or even just a statement pendant light hanging low over a sitting area or dining table. You can have more than one focal point, but without any at all a room will appear flat and uninteresting.
Declutter
Getting rid of clutter is very cathartic, and it will make your home feel bigger, calmer and much more inviting. It can seem like a daunting task, especially if you try to tackle an entire space in one go, so my advice is to begin with one manageable area such as a drawer, shelf or cupboard and then move on to another. Take everything out, and for every item ask yourself ‘do I use it?’ and ‘do I love it?’. If the answer to both questions is no, then it’s time say goodbye. If you’re unsure about anything, put it to one side and revisit it after a few days – if you haven’t missed it, you can probably let go of it.
Whatever you do, try not to create unnecessary waste. Donate usable things to charity shops, find new homes for them via Freecycle, or make a bit of money by selling them on Vinted, eBay or Facebook Marketplace.
‘Shop’ your home
Swapping accessories around and restyling spaces with items you already own is a simple way to change things up without buying anything new. It’s also a lot of fun, and you’ll be surprised by how easily you can transform a room with just one or two small tweaks. A forgotten object that’s gathering dust in a corner might end up being the perfect finishing touch for another area, and an unloved item can take on a whole new lease of life in a different setting.
A design client of mine recently told me that she’s planning to take all the accessories (artwork, vases, cushions, candleholders, the lot) from every area of her house, lay them out together on the floor and see what combinations leap out at her. I think it’s an excellent idea, as it’s often hard to see new ways to pair and style things when items are dotted around separate rooms.
Add texture
Introducing layers of texture will instantly add warmth and depth to a space and, again, small changes – a few cushions on a sofa, a blanket draped over bed, a rug beneath a coffee table – can make a big difference. Soft furnishings aren’t the only way to bring in more texture, either. One of my favourite tricks is to ensure the harder surfaces in every room incorporate tactile elements (perhaps a rattan seat, a stoneware vase or a rough-hewn timber plinth) alongside smoother materials such as marble, glass and metal.
Improve the lighting
Also vital to the overall appeal and functionality of a space is effective lighting. The most inviting and liveable rooms mix various light sources at different heights, with task lighting to help you see what you’re doing, ambient lighting to enhance the general mood and accent lighting to highlight specific features. You’ll find my full guide to designing a lighting scheme here, but there are a few simple measures that don’t require much expense or effort. Quick wins include adding a table or floor lamp to a gloomy corner (choose a rechargeable wireless design if you don’t have a handy plug socket nearby), using mirrors to maximise natural light, and swapping harsh bulbs for ones with a warmer glow. In addition, you can make your lighting dimmable without any rewiring thanks to smart bulbs, which let you alter the brightness and light temperature in seconds via a remote control or app; Phillips [AD – affiliate link] and IKEA both have good ranges.
And don’t forget the power of candlelight, especially on dark winter evenings. If you’re worried about having naked flames around the house, there are plenty of realistic-looking LED candles – my favourites are by Menu and Lights4Fun [AD – affiliate links].
Bring the outside in with flowers, foliage and plants
Introducing natural elements into the home is proven to boost our mental and physical wellbeing, and they make a wonderful way to freshen up indoor spaces for the new year. Countless studies have shown that flowers, foliage and plants all help to reduce stress and anxiety, purify the air and boost our productivity – and they go a long way to addressing the emptiness created by the sudden absence of Christmas decorations.
One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is create displays of seasonal bulbs, which will quickly flower in pots or vases of water. Hyacinths, narcissi, amaryllis and tulips are all readily available during the winter months and provide an uplifting reminder that spring is on its way. I also love having branches of evergreen foliage dotted around the house – they’re proof that nature is still alive, even when the landscape outside is frozen. Come late February / early March, I’ll swap them for budding branches to celebrate the changing seasons.
Maximise storage
Extra storage is often at the top of people’s home wishlists, and finding ways to keep things out of sight, organised and easily accessible can massively improve our day-to-day lives. What’s more, it needn’t involve spending lots of money on new furniture, built-in cupboards or the like. There are plenty of easy and affordable tricks to help you add more storage to your home, from choosing ottomans or coffee tables with hidden compartments to placing pull-out drawers or baskets beneath beds and sofas. You can also make existing wardrobes and cupboards work harder by adding more shelves, introducing a couple of risers [AD – affiliate link] or hanging canvas pocket organisers on the inside of doors.
Scent your home
Scent has a huge impact on mood and so introducing it into our homes is a sure-fire way to create a positive, inviting atmosphere – especially during the colder months, when we spend a lot of time indoors. There are numerous ways to go about it, including candles, diffusers and dried herb bundles, and you can make many of them yourself. Fragrance Your Home, an excellent book by Lesley Bramwell of Essence + Alchemy, is packed with ideas and step-by-step tutorials.
At this time of year I find myself drawn to fresh green fragrances, but everyone responds to scent differently so play around to see what appeals to you. You can even try ‘scentscaping’, which essentially means zoning various areas of your home with different fragrances that suit their function and the time of day. So, for example, you could use an invigorating scent in the bathroom to energise you each morning, and something more relaxing in the living room when you unwind in the evening.
Tackle small DIY jobs
Last but not least, we all have a list of little tasks that we’ve been meaning to get round to for ages, so why not get the year off to a satisfying start by ticking some of them off? Things like hanging artwork or going over tired tile grout with a grouting pen can be done in an hour or two, but they’ll make an instant difference. For example, this is the month I’m finally going to fill in and paint over the holes left in our kitchen walls by utensil hooks that we removed back in 2018!
Please note this post contains affiliate links (all clearly marked), which means I will receive a small commission on any resulting sales. You won’t pay any more by clicking on these links than you would by visiting the websites directly, and it helps to support the free content I create here.
All photography by Abi Dare
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