Harrogate interior designer’s jubilee styling tips

As we approach the Queen’s platinum jubilee, many of us are starting to scroll through Pinterest and Instagram to get some inspiration on how to decorate our homes.

The monumental royal celebration is the perfect excuse to string up the bunting, blow up balloons and do a spot of baking to host unforgettable parties throughout the long weekend.

We asked Harrogate interior designer Joan Maclean, who has launched a new online course, for some styling tips to help make your jubilee party one to remember.

Use a teapot as a display

“Isn’t tea the most quintessentially British thing? So dig out that old teapot, but use it instead of a vase and fill it with flowers. Here it is sitting on a bread board which is made of oak – the most English of trees.”

Think red, white and blue

 “You don’t just have to wave a flag – add a few red, white or blue touches. Here the Union Jacks just add a nod to the celebrations.”

Use a tray as a frame

“A tray is always a great way to contain your pieces – it acts like a frame. Here, alongside some bubbly and champagne flutes, I’m using the coronation glasses and mug for my red, white and blue flowers.”

Start at your front door

“I’ve planted up some perfect red flowers and with the addition of some tall silver branches and a couple of flags in my tall concrete planters,  here’s a stylish way to embrace the jubilee spirit at your door.”

Keep it simple – but striking

“If you just want to make a nod to the festivities, then raid your garden for some seasonal leaves or branches. With the addition of some red and white roses, here’s a striking, but simple, display in my hallway.”

Use a cake stand to display treasures

“A cloche or a glass cake stand, with its dome, is the perfect way to display a few treasures. Here are three pieces of coronation memorabilia.”

Raid your attic

“My family has treasures in the attic that don’t often see the light of day. These lead figures, with the incredible gold carriage, are part of a complete set from the coronation that are still in perfect condition.

“This window sill is the perfect spot – in fact window sills are the perfect place to display all kinds of treasures.”

Display memorabilia

“Here’s an old biscuit tin, which has found new life on my mantlepiece.”

“We used to get commemoration mugs and coins from school and here are some little things my mum had squirrelled away at the back of a cupboard.

“Dig out your family’s treasures and put them out – they stir fascinating memories and are a reminder of quite how long it is since 1952.”

Set the table for a traditional British afternoon tea

“A perfect British occasion calls for a fabulous afternoon tea – champagne, anyone?”

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Interior designer selling her Harrogate home after huge transformation

When I visited interior designer Joan Maclean’s Harrogate house for a course just before Christmas, it was love at first sight.

It was one of those properties that just made you feel instantly at home.

So when I spotted it on Rightmove, in my mind I had already packed up the removal van and moved in.

But, alas, we’re not in a position to move just yet, so I reined myself in and asked Joan to tell me more about her amazing home instead.

The study with glazed doors on to a roof terrace where there is a wire sculpture.

Sensational semi

Joan confirmed that she has indeed decided to sell the sensational 1919 semi on Wetherby Road, which she has extended and completely transformed.

She said:

“I’m thrilled to have two exciting new projects in France which have lured me away, but I know the new occupants of No 61 will enjoy the house and garden.”

The huge kitchen area.

Secret garden

Joan bought the property in September 2016 after initially only agreeing to view it out of politeness.

She said:

“It was a friend-of-a-friend selling it – I didn’t want to live on the Wetherby Road.

“What I didn’t know was that it hides a secret garden which extends the width of Harrogate Town Football Club’s pitch next door.”

While the garden was impressive, Joan said the house itself was crying out for a major renovation.

The house she bought had a sitting room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a box room.

Now, thanks to a contemporary rear and side extension, an attic conversion and reorganisation of the original layout, the property has a huge open-plan living kitchen, a drawing room and a cloakroom on the ground floor.

The open plan sitting area and dining room.

New-build

On the first floor, there are three double bedrooms, an en-suite and a house bathroom, and on the top floor, there is a large master suite with shower room and dressing room.

The property is now on the market with Verity Frearson for £700,000.

She said:

“The size of the plot meant we could look at a great extension. Rather than extending across the drive at the side of the property, David Scott, the architect, promoted the idea of developing the amazing new-build at the rear that now exists.”

Joan in her amazing home.

Inspiration

Joan worked in showbusiness and TV before moving to Los Angeles for five years, where she studied interior design at the University of California.

When it came to the design of the extension, she took inspiration from the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who she greatly admires.

She said:

“His influence is here at No. 61 – from the overhanging ‘pod’ bedroom suite at the back of the house, to the asymmetric windows.

“Probably one of his most iconic buildings is Falling Water with the overhang, although he also designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which is all about the curve.”

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Only two rooms remain as they were from the original floorplan, and with the loft conversion raising the gable end, the space now extends to 2,500sq ft.

Joan said:

“The key thing for me was to ensure that the living is predominantly at the rear of the property so, along with the new windows, there is not even a hint that the house is sited on a main road. I don’t think anyone ever quite believes me until they come into the space and there is silence.”

When it comes to the interior designer’s favourite room, she loves the master suite with its “views reaching far across towards Sutton Bank on a clear day”.

The master suite.

Storage

She said:

“I also love the super luxe en-suite, although my heart is held by the dressing room. What else do you do with space in the eaves? And every girl needs a place to hide those shoes and handbags.”

In fact the house boasts plenty of storage, with a downstairs cloakroom that features a wall of cupboards.

She said:

“I run interior design and styling courses and they are a treasure trove of my props –  especially as I rearrange my displays all the time.”

A stylish corner of the house on Wetherby Road.

She also loves the main living space, as it is where she spends most of her time.

She said:

“We moved a lot as I was growing up with my father’s job. My mother always assessed a house based upon the party-hosting capabilities of the space – I’m a girl after her own heart and this house is made for parties!”

The living area.

Colour

Reflecting on how the home has evolved over the years, Joanie said one of the elements she has been “thrilled with” is the colours that run through the house.

She said:

“They’re entirely consistent through the space, with ‘Little Owl’ as the predominant colour being a soft, warm grey, and ‘Tempest’ – a moody, deep blue green – as the contrast downstairs. These are both from Fired Earth.

“With a small hit of Farrow and Ball’s Peignoir in the master suite, there’s a real flow through the house and they’re really soothing, warm neutral tones that really work in this light-filled space.”

And while the house is stunning, the ‘secret garden’, is undoubtedly the pièce de résistance.

‘Striking’ plants

Joan said:

“There’s a large terrace directly outside the house and then steps take you down into the long garden. The design is all based around curves as a counter to the rectangular nature of the house.

“I love architectural plants so phormium, red hot pokers, fatsia and sedum fill the beds – they are green and striking all year.

“There’s also a magical element to the garden at night. Apart from the lights, I have a projector and we have movie nights projecting onto the rear wall of the old cottage, whose back wall is one of the boundaries of the garden – the best way to turn a virtue out of a reality.”

The stunning ‘secret’ garden, that stretches around the property.

Deck the halls: Harrogate interior designers’ Christmas décor tips

This article is sponsored by Lapicida

With Christmas just around the corner, most of us have now started, or at least thought about, decking the halls with festive decorations.

And while some love nothing more than going nuts with a blow up Santa, flashing coloured lights and bursts of tinsel, others will opt for a more muted colour palette and stick to a particular theme.

But as it turns out, Christmas decor is packed with unlimited design potential – we just need to get a little creative.

To help kick-start your festive inspiration, feast your eyes on these Christmas decorating ideas from the Harrogate district’s interior designers.

From pared back style to innovative alternatives to favourite festive staples, here are some top decorating tips to make your spirits merry, bright, and beautiful.

Festive colour palettes, adding festive cheer and igniting the senses

Nommi Fligg, interior designer at Furnish & Fettle, Harrogate, Wetherby and Pocklington:

After 2020’s festive season turned out to be a bit of a wash-out, we’re only too happy to look ahead, towards what will hopefully be a more ‘normal’ December, with more family members gathered around the tree and fewer gathered around Zoom.

The question we often get asked as designers is, how do we choose the right colours and accessories to decorate our home in a way that’s sophisticated, yet special for the Christmas season?

Every year there are always new trends and there are different styles of decorations from Nordic, to country to minimalist, however, as we redefine our homes at this time of year, we’re focusing on bringing seasonal elements in that feel both celebratory and natural, incorporating warm winter elements to bring festive feelings into our spaces.

Establishing a seasonal colour palette

When working on our projects, one of the first things we consider is the colour palette. Although decorating for the festive season is different from selecting finishes or furniture, identifying tones you want to incorporate in your seasonal decor always makes for a more cohesive end result. This year, we’re inspired by muted traditional holiday tones that feel wintery, warm, and neutral enough to blend in with our spaces.

Incorporating natural elements

Layering in natural elements can look like anything from incorporating greenery to adding textural materials like wood tones or displaying artwork that displays a wintery feeling. For our clients, we love styling logs by the fireplace, front porch, or even in the mudroom to introduce a seasonal element. Add them to a pretty log holder, pile them in a woven basket, or simply stack them to bring a subtle wintery feeling to your vignette.

Adding festive cheer 

This season, we’re finding new ways to make our homes feel merrier through unexpected celebratory elements.

Decorating for Christmas is about balancing big moments, like your tree, with smaller moments throughout your home, like faux seasonal florals, that you can change up as and when you feel. You could also hang a good-old wreath in your entranceway, or add cheer and little ornaments to your bookshelves.

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A designer top tip would be to switch out your throws and pillows to more seasonal ones can go a long way, but they don’t have to be embroidered with reindeers and Santa Claus to feel festive. Try incorporating velvet, wool, and knit textures to add a pretty, streamlined look.

Igniting the senses

The first thing you can do to start making your home feel seasonal is light a candle.

When designing a space, we like to think about our senses and how they ignite our surroundings. Create a welcoming winter environment by adding ambiance through warm scents, cozy textiles, a calming colour palette, and elevated accents.

We love changing out our scented candles or room diffusers – something as simple as a change in smell can tingle the senses and memory-bank and instantly transport you to the land of Christmas.

Where we can, we enjoy a real fern wreath so we can breathe in the smell of the outdoors whilst tucked up on the sofa.

Another top tip, if your tree isn’t in the sunniest of spaces, glass baubles, as opposed to solid ones, will help to reflect the sun and candlelight around your room and add a warming glow to the atmosphere.

Alongside candles, table lamps are your biggest ally, you can never have too many and they will never let you down on a winters evening, bringing coziness and sparkle to all items placed around them.

Five top tips for creating the perfect dinner table at Christmas

Rachael Webber, design director at Stylesmith Interiors, Harrogate

1.Simple and elegant dressing

Use lots of greenery and candles – nothing glitzy. Use the centrepiece to run down the table, rather than a runner.

2. Consider the size of your centrepiece

Make sure it isn’t too tall so that your guests can see each other.

3. Create ambience

Use lots of layered lighting and beautifully-scented candles to add ambience.

4. It’s all about the crockery

Use striking dinner plates to create a feast for the eyes.

5. Dig out your best glasses

Use good quality wine and champagne glasses – again keeping things simple and elegant with no bling.

Simplicity is powerful: Top tips for living room Christmas decor 

Joanie Mac, interior designer, Harrogate

My top tips for decorating at Christmas hang around some key ideas: Simplicity is powerful, use what you have, and some wonderful wrapping!

1.Re-think what you already have 

This is three cake stands stacked up with a White Company metal wreath from a couple of years ago and piled high with baubles.

And this is upturned vases and baubles creating a city skyline along the mantelpiece.

2. You can create the spirit of Christmas in the smallest of spots with a bit of imagination

Think about different heights of objects, some foliage, pine cones and berries collected on your walk through the woods and create magic.

3. Pared back is so impactful

Here is just a mirror, a wreath and a couple of decorations, but it looks fabulous against the strong blue wall.

And here is another pared back one with a beautiful glass lamp, a vintage light fitting and a crystal bauble all sitting on a vintage trunk.

4. Include presents under the tree

And finally, wrap some presents in beautiful wrapping paper and place them under the tree.

Harrogate interiors masterclass has boosted my confidence with design

This article is sponsored by Lapicida

As a nation, we have always taken great pride in our homes.

And in the age of Pinterest and Instagram, online shopping and interiors influencers, it has become easier than ever to have a go at being an interior designer.

You only have to look at the continuing success of glossy magazines like Ideal Home, as well as popular TV shows like Changing Rooms and Grand Designs, to recognise we have a huge fascination with transforming our homes.

And in 2021 – after 18 months of being very much at home – we are more obsessed than ever.

Guilty pleasure

Interior design is well and truly having a moment and I am here for it. My guilty pleasure on an evening when the kids have gone to bed is trawling through Instagram and screenshotting all the gorgeous images of people’s homes. I’m also a Rightmove addict and I read every interiors magazine I can get my hands on.

A rear view of Joanie’s renovated home on Wetherby Road.

So when Harrogate interior designer Joanie Mac invited me to join one of her masterclass dayschools at her own incredible home in Harrogate, it was a no-brainer.

While I have tried to absorb every tip and piece of knowledge passed on by designers, I will admit I’m still pretty clueless. I know when something works in my home, but I don’t necessarily know why.

So when I rocked up to Joanie’s house on Wetherby Road on Sunday morning at 9.30am, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

Fabulous

Joanie’s home is everything you expect from an interior designer. Completely fabulous. Obviously I couldn’t stop myself having a nosy at all her quirky furniture, artwork, accessories and bold colour schemes. I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

Joanie’s fabulous open-plan sitting area and dining room.

I was joined by four other students from a variety of backgrounds. There was a mum who attended with her art student daughter, an upholsterer and a primary school teacher, who was planning on changing her career.

After a welcome cup of coffee, we all took a seat at Joanie’s white marble kitchen island and began our first lesson of the day on colour theory.

“Colour is such a powerful thing,” explained Joanie, as she showed us various colour schemes and images and explained why they worked or didn’t.

“Colour changes everything.”

Four seasons

Joanie explained how colours can be broken down into the four seasons. Spring features bright vibrant colours, summer is more muted, soft and “flowery”, autumn is dark and cocooning, while winter, again with its darker tones, has a more “masculine edge”.

Apparently these colours play to our personalities and most of us usually fall into two seasons.

Joanie said:

“The big thing about colour is it can pull everything together – the things you wouldn’t think match. But you have to use it to create cohesiveness not choppiness.”

After another cup of coffee – it was a Sunday after all – Joanie took us on a tour of her house, which she has renovated and decorated to showcase her ideas and methods.

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With her walls painted predominantly in Little Owl, a soft warm grey by Fired Earth, Joanie explained that she had used furniture, accessories and lighting to inject colour and bring her home to life. Her rule is to stick to three colours and use variants of these in each room.

Exhibition

Joanie’s home is like one big beautiful exhibition and it certainly gave me some inspiration – from her mixture of vintage and modern design to the way she had hung a stunning floral dress on the wall as a piece of art.

A pretty floral dress can be used as a piece of wall art.

Importantly she had made everything flow by using the “red thread” concept. The idea is that you use this when decorating your own home to link the spaces and bind them together as a whole house, rather than just a series of rooms linked by passages.

For example you could use a splash of blue in all of your rooms. The idea is you must never decorate a room in isolation but consider the property as a whole.

Patterns and textures

After we had explored her house, including her amazing garden, Joanie spoke about patterns and textures.

She said:

“It’s about the friction between the textures. You don’t want to overload the room, but you want to create friction.”

Joanie takes us on a tour of her amazing home.

She suggested sticking to three textures in the room, using accessories like rugs, cushions, wallpaper and vases, and to also make sure you add plenty of green with plants.

It was then time to get stuck into some practical work. We were asked to cut up pictures from interior magazines of images we were drawn to, as well as fabrics and wallpapers, and stick them down to create a mood board.

Art project

This was actually lots of fun, as I’m so used to doing this sort of thing digitally on Pinterest. It felt so much more satisfying to actually create a board with something tangible. It was like doing a school art project and I found it really therapeutic.

Part of my moodboard.

We were then told to write down the first five words that came into our heads to describe ourselves. And it turns out our moodboards, and the colours and textures we used to create them, actually said a lot about us as people.

Brave

Initially I was quite reserved and almost needed permission from Joanie to go nuts with colour and texture. It turns out this summed up the anxious side of my personality perfectly. Once I relaxed into it, I started adding floral patterns, velvet, metallics and bright pink, and somehow it actually worked. I already felt braver when it came to putting this into practice at home.

After lunch on a naturally beautifully-laid table, featuring wooden serving platters, vintage cutlery and decorated with sprigs of rosemary, we looked at seven iconic design styles and learned about the style elements for each one. These were:

Lunch is served on a beautifully-laid table.

We also learned briefly about lighting and how this can transform your space, before moving on to creating vignettes.

A vignette, in terms of interior design, is a tiny, curated style statement, made up of a group of objects that are displayed on a shelf, a table, or elsewhere in the home.

Vignette

We had been asked to bring five objects from our own houses. Mine included an old framed photo of my great grandmother, an antique cigarette box and a vintage coffee tin.

Joanie then made a vignette using each of these items, as well as some of her own accessories, and her creations were really impressive.

We learned to look at them through a picture frame as an individual piece of art and to also contain some of the items, for example on a tray or under a glass cloche, which was extremely effective. Again it was interesting what we all chose to bring, interior design really is about you and projecting your personality.

One of the vignettes created by Joanie using items from my home.

I finished the day feeling really relaxed, but also motivated and excited about putting all the new skills I had learned into practice in my own home.

I am definitely going to be more adventurous with both colour and texture. If think something is going to work in a space, whether that be a really dark paint, a crazy patterned rug, or a random fabric, I’m going to be more confident to give it a go.

After all, my home is a reflection of me and I now feel brave enough to embrace it.

My favourite styling tips from the day:

 

Learning about colour with Joanie.