Picture your walls as your own personal art gallery
The recent trend for neutrals and minimalism and the now ubiquitous feature wallpaper have combined to create rooms lacking in personality.
Rooms should tell a story rather than just slavishly follow fashion, according to Stafford Cliff, and he should know.
An art director and design consultant, who produced the very first Habitat catalogues for his friend Sir Terence Conran, he is a well-regarded expert.
He has produced more than 60 books on design and the home including The Way We Live, a 480-page survey of homes around the world.
His latest 1,000 Home Ideas is a text light collection of 1,000 photographs oozing visual inspiration.
He included a section on walls and says: "Rooms tell many stories, as you'll know if you've visited the museum homes of painters, writers, collectors or famous explorers.
"If it's a house full of character, that identity will come from the person's possessions, what they collected and how it is displayed on shelves, in cabinets, on tables and, most importantly, on walls."
But if you don't believe that you have creative flair, it can be difficult to do something different.
Stafford says: "For some, having the confidence to hang things, personal things, quirky things on walls takes a certain bravery they might not have. The solution is to concentrate first on one small space – maybe in a hall or bedroom.
"Approach the wall as a page in a scrapbook rather than a gallery wall and don't think you have to use expensive images or one-off artworks.
"Displaying the most unusual and personal things often proves to be the most interesting, generating the most compliments and enagaging your eye for the longest time."
n 1,000 Home Ideas by Stafford Cliff is published by Quadrille, 14.99. To order any of the books on this page from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. P&P is 2.75
Bright Ideas
A collection of objects can look stunning: hats, small mirrors, masks.
Create a photowall of your favourite pictures. You can use inexpensive frames or group the images closely together like a jigsaw or slightly overlapping.
If you can't afford wallpaper, buy a sample sheet and frame it.
Wall stickers are fantastic. Try Yorkshire-based Wall Glamour, www.wallglamour. co.uk for a good selection or Rockett St George, www.rockettstgeorge.co.uk
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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