How to Create a Feeling of Home

A beautiful house may be lovely to look at, but unless it has a sense of personality and comfort will it feel good? Here, Pringle & Pringle’s Creative Director, Sophie Pringle, shares her expert interior design ideas to help you create a feeling of home where you live

Nowhere tells the stories of who we are like our homes do. From the photographs on the walls and the trinkets we’ve collected on our travels to the evidence of real life, like the pile of children’s shoes in the hallway to the unglamorous but much-loved food processor sitting on the kitchen worktop. Our homes are a deeply personal sanctuary where we can truly be ourselves and live as we wish to. Most importantly, our homes should make us feel good, rather than just look good and be a pleasure to live in.

Think about how you really live

The key to achieving a sense of pleasure, I believe, is by making everything easy. Think about how you really live and be honest with yourself. What’s your daily routine? Do you and your partner get up at the same time? If so, twin basins in the bathroom would be a good idea. Is your bedroom quite far from the kitchen? Why not install a little coffee station in your dressing area? Do you and your family use a lot of tech? Factor that into your design. In our Battersea project (pictured), my client’s sons and husband loved tech, but she didn’t want to live in a jumble of wires and ugly screens. We sourced a beautiful Julian Chichester cabinet for the basement media room and had it custom painted in Papers & Paints in one of their 1960s colours SC348 - Flash. It stores away all the tech and provides a beautiful piece of furniture.

Rethink the functions of a room

Think of what you aspire to do in your home. Do you want to practice yoga? Make it easy for yourself by creating a dedicated area which isn’t cluttered with heavy furniture you’d have to heave out of the way before you even got your yoga mat out. Let’s be honest, if you don’t make it easy for yourself, you’re far less likely to do it.

One of my clients is a very musical family; the husband and both children play the French horn and the piano. Rather than having to practice in their hallway, I recommended they change their little-used front sitting room into a music room. I’m designing some custom joinery to store their instruments and there will be a sofa in there for reading and relaxing, but we’ve kept the furniture fairly minimal so that they can also use it as a space to practice yoga.

Another client has two girls who love crafting and would always do it at the kitchen table. Rather than having all the paraphernalia spilling out of the kitchen cabinets, I suggested they create a dedicated craft area in an alcove in their basement. It has plenty of desk space, a circular table and an overhead light. The girls love it and will use it for years to come, whether for crafting or for homework (there will be more about creating dedicated workspaces in your home in a future blog.)

Aspiration versus reality

Ask yourself how much entertaining you really do (when we’re not in the midst of a global pandemic, of course.) Many people want to design their homes around entertaining when, in reality, the number of times they’ll hold a huge dinner party is vanishingly small compared with how they’ll live in their home day to day.

One of my clients wanted to be able to entertain large numbers of guests, but didn’t have the space to do that in their kitchen. They have a large hallway, so I advised them to put a circular table with multiple leaves in it in the centre. For everyday use, it’s a beautiful walk-through room with cheerful flowers on the table. When entertaining, they can simply extend the table and transform the room into a wonderful dining room. Also, don’t feel like you need lots of extra chairs just for the occasional dinner party; they’re a pain to find homes for and it’s simple and inexpensive to hire some.

Make it personal

Now it’s time to add the personality to your home. When I start working with a client, I ask them to fill in a questionnaire asking about their favourite places around the world, things they’ve done, their happiest moments in their life and so on. We take all of that and create concepts that might be around colour or emotion. One of my clients had spent a lot of time sailing around Greece so we designed the sitting room (pictured) around the colours of Greece. It’s a subtle reference, but it’s very personal to him.

Likewise, don’t be afraid to make use of items you’ve picked up on your travels. A jug you’ve stored in a cupboard can become a utensil pot; a shell you collected on the beach can become a soap dish; a bowl you brought home from a holiday can become a dish for keeping your keys in. These things will bring you pleasure every day and make your home personal to you. Blow up your holiday photographs to a size where they don’t look like they came from a poster shop and frame them beautifully, or perhaps group family photographs in matching frames hung up the staircase or in the downstairs loo.

Be brave

Most importantly, choose what you love and don’t worry about what other people will think. If you’re brave with your choices, you’re likely to be much more satisfied with the result. One of my first clients loved colour and pattern and wanted to feel excited to be home when he came through his front door. I presented him with some palm leaf wallpaper for his entrance hall (pictured), which he was scared by but he loved. He decided to go for it and five years later he still loves it.

Don’t Strive For Perfection

We can often stall when it comes to making decisions about our homes because we’re scared of getting it wrong. But as the brilliant interior designer Rita Konig says in her Create Academy course: “done is better than perfect.” If the wall colour you choose isn’t quite right, you can always do it again. If you can’t afford to reupholster the sofa you inherited, spend £200 on a beautiful suzani throw for it instead.

Finally, I’m always inspired by this quote from Vincent van Gogh: “Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.” Love your home and it will love you back.