1. What should homeowners think about before starting an interior design project?
Before anything else — figure out how you actually live in the house. Not how you imagine you should live, but the real, boring day-to-day stuff. Where does the morning light hit? Where do shoes and bags actually end up, versus where you want them to end up? Which rooms get used and which ones just look nice? I’ve seen so many projects go sideways because someone fell in love with a sofa before they’d even sorted the layout. Sort the budget and the plan first. It’s not glamorous, but it saves you from tearing things out six months later.
2. How do you stay stylish without chasing every trend?
I tell clients to think of their home in two layers. The bones — walls, flooring, the big furniture — should be things you’re fine living with for a decade. Boring, in a good way. Then the second layer is where you get to play: a cushion, a lamp, a piece of art, a rug you swap out when you’re bored. That’s the layer that can chase trends. If your sofa is trendy, you’re stuck with a trendy sofa for ten years. If your cushions are trendy, you just… buy new cushions.
3. Easy ways to make a home feel more luxurious without spending a lot?
People always assume it comes down to money. It really doesn’t. Lighting alone will do more for a room than half the furniture in it. So will getting the scale right — a chair that’s the wrong size for a room throws the whole thing off, even if it’s expensive. And honestly? Just having less stuff. A half-empty room with three good pieces almost always reads richer than a full room with fifteen okay ones.
4. How much do lighting and colour actually matter?
A lot more than people give them credit for. I always start with natural light — where it comes from, how strong it is, what time of day it hits which wall — before even thinking about paint colours or fixtures. Then you layer in the artificial lighting on top of that. As for colour, my one rule is: don’t pick it because it’s trending this year. Pick it because it fits how big the room is, how much light it gets, and how you actually want to feel sitting in there. A shade that works with your life will still work in five years. A shade that’s just fashionable won’t.
5. What mistakes keep coming up?
Buying furniture before the layout’s settled — that’s the classic one. Someone sees a table online, loves it, buys it, and then spends weeks trying to make their room work around it. It rarely does. The other one is just cramming too much into a space because everything on its own seemed like a good idea. My process is pretty simple: layout first, then the big furniture, then lighting, then materials, and the small decorative stuff comes last. Treat it as one composition instead of a shopping list.
6. How do you keep a home personal without it looking messy?
A house should feel lived in, not staged. Photos, art you’re actually attached to, things picked up on trips, a few old books, maybe something that belonged to a grandparent. Those are what make a place feel like yours. But — and this is the part people miss — you don’t put all of it out at once. Pick your favourites. Let them have some space around them. Keep the palette consistent behind it all, and somehow it ends up looking both personal and pulled together, instead of cluttered.
7. Someone wants to redesign but has no idea where to start — what do you tell them?
Start with a feeling, not a mood board full of things you randomly liked. What do you want to feel when you walk through your own front door? Collect images, textures, colours you keep gravitating toward, and look for what they have in common — there’s usually a pattern even if you can’t name it yet. Then look honestly at what you already have. What’s working. What isn’t. What you actually need to change versus what you just feel like changing. And don’t rush it. A home that’s been thought through properly still feels right years later, long after whatever’s trending right now has quietly gone out of style.