Adding colour, pattern & texture to a neutral interior with The Pure Edit

[Advertisement – this is a paid collaboration with The Pure Edit. As always, all words and opinions are my own]

A love of neutral, minimalist interiors doesn’t mean staying away from colour, pattern and texture altogether – in fact they’re often key to ensuring pared-back spaces feel warm and cosy rather than bland and uninviting. To show how you can incorporate interest into a neutral room without overwhelming it, I’ve teamed up with new British sustainable homeware brand The Pure Edit to add a few touches to our guest bedroom – the most unfussy of all the spaces in our house due to its tiny size.

Launched earlier this week, The Pure Edit makes beautiful pieces for stylish, relaxed living, with an impressive commitment to minimising its environmental impact at the core of the business. The company works with its entire supply chain to develop ethical materials and manufacturing techniques, and as much as possible is sourced and made locally. Among its range are recycled cotton cushions and curtains, 50 gorgeous paint shades, FSC-certified wallpapers printed with water-based ink, woven fabrics and filling fibres from recycled plastic bottles, and foam-free furniture constructed from sustainable timber and coconut coir. Perhaps most importantly for me, everything is made to last for years to come, so you’ll find considered design and timeless nature-inspired colours in place of throwaway trends. 

Using some of The Pure Edit’s gorgeous products to demonstrate, here are my top five tips for adding subtle colour, pattern and texture to a neutral space. 

Layer colours

Firstly, create the perfect blank canvas by choosing one main base colour for the room and then layering up paler and darker shades of it – a technique known in the design world as ‘tone-on-tone’ decorating. Here, for example, I’ve paired pale beige walls with slightly darker beige bedding (The Pure Edit’s beautifully soft pure linen bedding in ‘Natural’), with a few touches of off-white in the curtains, sheet, rug and lower pillowcases to break things up. The result is a calming, refined look with a bit of depth, and it’s ideal for a space devoted to rest and relaxation.  

Be clever with accent colours

Accent colours are a sure-fire way to add interest to a pared-back interior, but they’re best used sparingly. Getting carried away and splashing them over everything will only look twee and contrived, so my advice is to go slowly and start with two or three pieces. The beauty of neutral décor is that it can carry pretty much any colour you want, so you can choose whatever suits your taste and style. And you needn’t stick to one accent colour alone, as long as the hues have similar undertones. Here, I’ve used two – deep olive green, incorporated through bedside accessories and a pair of The Pure Edit’s velvet ‘Cosmos’ cushions; and rust-brown, which appears in bunches of dried leaves and a striped ‘Aline’ cotton cushion. Although totally different at first glance, they’re both warm yellow-based colours so they offset each other without clashing. 

You’ll notice that this room, like every other in my house, also contains a few black elements. It’s a trick I often use to add structure to a neutral space and stop the overall scheme from looking wishy-washy. And, as black can be used with almost any other hue, it doesn’t limit your choices elsewhere in the room.

Add a hint of pattern with stripes and checks

Simple stripes and checks are great for those of us who want to dip our toe into pattern but have an aversion to anything overly busy. They also work brilliantly alongside other prints and can be paired with anything from florals to geometric patterns such as the diamond rug in this room. If you’re nervous, start with smaller items such as cushions rather than patterned curtains, bedding or throws.  

Incorporate lots of texture 

Texture is vital for adding depth and warmth to any neutral space. Textiles are the obvious way to begin, but the materials you choose for the furniture and smaller accessories play an important role too. In a bedroom I like to stick to natural textures to enhance the feel of a soothing sanctuary, combining breezy linen, lustrous velvet, soft cotton, grained wood, a paper lampshade and matt stoneware ceramics.

Keep things seasonal

You might have spotted that everything I’ve done in this room has an autumnal vibe to it, which brings me to my final tip: dress your space for the seasons. It’s a wonderful way to change things up so that you don’t get bored with a space, and colours and textures that echo the natural world never look jarring to the eye. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that bringing a bit of the outside in can reduce stress, improve our mental wellbeing and even aid our physical health. You don’t need to buy new items each time, either – over the years I’ve built up a collection of timeless, good-quality textiles and accessories (The Pure Edit’s pieces are wonderful additions!) that I can swap in and out to suit my mood and the time of year. 

Shop The Pure Edit’s full range of sustainable home furnishings here.

All photography by Abi Dare