This is an edited extract from the new book Style Your Home by Emma Blomfield, published by Hardie Grant Books, with illustrations by Emily O’Neill
In this extract, Emma shares her tips for giving your home the personal touch.
PERSONALITY
If you crave a space that feels like you, showcases your family’s quirks, gives insight into the things you love most in life and makes you smile every time you walk in the front door, this element will help achieve all of those things.
People usually feel a strong pull to personalise their space shortly after moving into a new home. You will want to put your own stamp on a place that may have been renovated by someone else. This is not something people always excel at, and it can be a fine line between adding nods to your interests and experimenting a little too much.
By going through and personalising your home you immediately get a sense of ownership and control over your environment. It helps your children settle into a new home that they may not find familiar in any way and contributes to everyone’s sense of belonging.
There are a number of ways to inject little snippets of personality into your home, and the good news is that a lot of them are free, cheap or what you already have lying around the house!
Found objects
Found objects doesn’t mean things you’ve found on the street that others have left out for collection! Rather it refers to feathers, leaves, quills, stones, deserted nests, shells, driftwood and so on. All of these can be arranged in a shadow box or basket on your coffee table to remind you of a beach holiday or a farm stay.
Family memories
This is the ultimate way to show off some personality. Polaroids, mementos from holidays or even children’s art from school up on the wall are inexpensive ways to remind you of beautiful memories and show others a bit more about who lives in your home.
Flowers
Adding flowers ticks off a number of elements of styling, adding colour, texture, fragrance and memories. They might be flowers you’ve picked from your garden (or Grandma’s garden), a gift from a partner to commemorate an anniversary, or maybe a vibrant birthday bouquet from friends. Yes, flowers have an expiry date but they have this beautiful way of brightening up your home and making you smile every time you walk by.
Heirlooms
Heirlooms are some of the most magical objexts you can add to your home. They’re often things you already have such as cutlery, crockery or vases. There’s something so special about putting items on display that have been handed down to you. Maybe it’s a serving dish your mother used every time you went over for a Sunday roast and now you use it to serve dinner to your own children. Or maybe it’s something of almost no value that you played with on your grandmother’s dressing table as a child and that now sits on your fireplace mantel piece and reminds you of happy times when you were young.
However, mixing old and new can be tricky, especially if it’s an heirloom you’ve inherited that’s quite large and striking and very obviously old world. Chances are, though, if you have a meaning attached to an item, you’ll generally find a way to make it work. Refer back to the elements on previous pages for inspiration, such as repetition of colour, mixing up textures and grouping like with like.
Gifts
Loved ones who have spent time looking for beautiful trinkets or meaningful items for you to display in your home creates one of the most amazing love languages. Showcasing gorgeous gifts is another lovely way to inject character and charm into your home, with the added bonus of your friend or family member spotting their gift on display.
Cultural heritage
Family background plays a huge role in shaping our personalities, sense of belonging and identity, especially for children growing up and learning about their ancestors and family heritage. The most common way to incorporate cultural heritage into your home is through art, ceramics, textiles, and religious or spiritual items. Each piece you add that holds cultural significance helps add aesthetic value, and a source of pride and connection to your roots.
The other beautiful thing about incorporating cultural heritage is that it helps preserve traditions, customs and history, and keeps it alive for generations to come.
Personalised accessories
Nothing spells personality like a highly customised item, such as monogrammed coasters, napkins, mouse pads, notebooks and ring dishes. Or maybe you’ve commissioned a beautiful artwork from a local artist or saved up for years to have a special piece handcarved for your home. These personalised pieces are special to you and could become heirlooms for the next generation.
Collections
Nothing piques a guest’s interest like a grouping of special collectables such as records, books, china, vases and antiques. These items tell a story and spark conversations that give insight into the personalities and characteristics of the people who live in the home.
Art
Where to even start with art! As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this couldn’t be more true for artwork. What one person finds incredible, the next may find horrendous. But that’s all part of the personalisation process and is the ultimate expression of your personality.
Art can do so much for a room. It adds colour, texture, scale, visual weight, interest and focal points. It can also help make small spaces feel larger than they are.
Art has the ability to trick the eye. You can fake a view for the room, making it feel like you’re looking out a window to a beautiful vista, by hanging a large landscape painting or print featuring a bush or beach setting.
You can fill a blank wall with a gallery grouping of family photos to show who lives there, the family tree and beautiful family memories. If you don’t want to hang an entire gallery of art on one wall, pairs work beautifully, too. Pairs usually come in portrait shape (vertical) or squares. Hanging two pieces together can be a great way to elongate a room. Vertical pieces stacked together draw your eye up and work better on skinny or narrow walls with plenty of height, such as up a staircase or at the end of a double height entryway.
Homemade items
Just like gifts and heirlooms, handmade pieces can be a really meaningful way to inject personality into your room. It can be children’s preschool artwork, a tapestry from your grandmother to mark the birth of your first child, a vase you made in a pottery class or a DIY candle. There are so many different ways to use homemade items around your home.
Style Your Home is out now, RRP $39.99
