These dark winter days always seem to leave us dreaming of spring time, when everything feels brighter.
So now may be the perfect time to fast forward, at home at least, by treating yourself to some cheery new-season interiors.
Dazzle your senses using colour updates, home fragrances and sumptuous textures to create a sensory haven.
Colour me happy
Spring is the colour green; a vibrant and fertile shade that is sure to bring cheer. Incorporating tranquil tones, whether you prefer olive, emerald or sage, will brighten a room and your mood.
Refreshing: Swoon’s green velvet sofa (£1,199, DFS) should work well in a sitting room
‘Green is the perfect colour to add into your scheme for the incoming season,’ says Sarah O’Sullivan, home designer at John Lewis.
‘Choose mossy, sage greens for an easy-to-live-with pop of colour. Opt for these shades in living spaces or bedrooms, or to create a calming mood that promotes moments of wellness such as relaxing, reading and sleeping.’
Keen to bring colour to your walls? The spring wallpaper collection from Designers Guild includes Karakusa.
The print features trailing vines and foliage to create a contemporary damask wallpaper (from £85 per metre).
If you’re looking to refresh your seating, a green sofa or accent chair will do the trick. For the kitchen or dining room, choose a sage-green, woven cane chair (£179, John Lewis), while Swoon’s four-seater velvet sofa (£1,199, DFS) would work well in a sitting room.
Green can be seamlessly added using accessories such as cushions, curtains and bed linen. Get a quick fix with the cotton velvet ivy cushion (£25, John Lewis).
The power of plants
Calming: Oka’s faux fig tree (from £59.50, Oliver Bonas)
Nothing says spring like plants and blooms. If you have a track record of forgetting to water your greenery, then LSA International’s new Balcony Collection is just the ticket.
This is a range of mouth-blown, self-watering glass planters (from £75).
Patch plants, meanwhile, has a huge selection of indoor greenery.
For even longer-lasting greenery, consider faux flowers and plants, which not only look realistic, but are practical and extremely low maintenance, too.
Try Oka’s rose, ivy and allium bunch (reduced to £60).
Alternatively, an artificial zebra grass, areca palm or fiddle tree fig plant will inject some greenery, and offer a sense of calm (from £59.50, Oliver Bonas).
Scents appeal
Home fragrance helps to create atmosphere and is a useful tool for giving each room its own character and purpose. It can also help mask your own domestic notes of children, chicken nuggets, and maybe a hint of dog.
While scented candles have become a status symbol, there are several other options available, including room sprays, fragrance diffusers — and even digital diffusers, if you want to go high-tech.
Try a portable air-purifying scent diffuser, which as the name suggests purifies the air and subtly scents the room (£65, The White Company), and choose an oil that suits your mood and room. Citrus-based aromas are the essence of spring.
The White Company’s new scent — Grapefruit & Mandarin — will invigorate the senses.
The collection includes oil, candle, diffuser and spray (from £10). The new fragrance Bergamot from Malin+Goetz offers similar delights. The range includes a candle, which has a fruity-sweet scent with mild spicy hints (£50).
Working from home? Brain-stimulating peppermint could help with that mid-afternoon slump. The Dunelm Wellness oil mint reed diffuser should do the job (£14).
Touchy feely
Having beautiful, soft items around your home will bring comfort as well as style. Cashmere is not just for winter — it can also be used (and worn) through the spring and summer.
A pure cashmere throw is by far the most luxurious. Go for broke with one made by Johnstons of Elgin at the family mill in Scotland.
The generous-sized throws give an aspirational edge to any living space, with six colours reduced by £300 (from £350).
A cashmere blend attracts lower prices. Try the grey and mint merino and cashmere herringbone throw (£165, Heals) or the duck-egg wool and cashmere throw (£115, Soak and Sleep).
For softness under foot, splash out on a new rug. There’s nothing like sheepskin for placing next to the bed, making getting up in the mornings more bearable.
The sheepskin Mongolian rug in clover, grey, ivory or fjord would add texture (from £56, John Lewis), or try the medium Shearer in natural at Loaf (£130) which is a curly shearling.
You might also explore velvet. Double up on texture and colour with a velvet cushion in sage green (from £45, Heals), in moss (from £55, Oka) or ivy (£25, John Lewis).
For spring, you could add white or light velvet for playful, plush accents. M&S’s champagne velvet cushion will do the trick (£15), or white clara velvet cushion (from £14, Dunelm).
Savings of the week: toasters
The KitchenAid Artisan two slot toaster is down from £229 to £204.95 at Harts of Stur.
The toaster is said to have been invented in the late 1890s, but the world had to wait until 1920 for the pop-up version to arrive on the scene.
A century later, about 87 per cent of us eat toast for breakfast, according to research – which suggests that a reliable toaster could be a sound investment.
KitchenAid toasters have a following – because of their retro 1950s styling, and because they deliver seven different shades of toast.
At Harts of Stur, the price of the KitchenAid Artisan two slot toaster has been cut from £229 to £204.95.
Obviously, such expenditure is not necessary. At Argos, you can save 25 per cent on the four-slot Russell Hobbs Worcester in black and silver which is now £30.
Wayfair has the grey four-slot Haden Brighton which was £35 and is now £28.73.
Enjoy your toast — whether with jam, marmalade or Marmite.
ANNE ASHWORTH
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