Another retro trend renaissance: hello pink bathrooms

Pink bathrooms are a trend a-brewing, I'm telling you, and I've been eyeing them longingly for a while. 

I thought it might just be me, but then these much maligned blasts from the past started popping up all over Pinterest. (Though not especially looking like this one, below, even though it's incredible.)



Then I visited the beautifully designed Bill Granger restaurant in Clerkenwell (read

Wednesday Question: gold taps – well, would you?

Gold taps were to 80s interiors what a Lamborghini is to inner city driving. A bit showy-offy for the sake of it.

So who'd have thought they'd be reincarnated all these years later in such pleasing way? It's a quick post from me this week as there's lots going on, but here's a run down of the new way to do gold taps. The trick is to mix them with a utiltarian back-drop and play down the flash.

Object of the day: New Eley Kishimoto wallpapers

Weeeeeell, if I can't write about eye-popping budget-stretching wallpaper during the London Design Festival, when else? (The event started this weekend and goes on until next Sunday.)

I'm a big fan of Eley Kishimoto clothes, and the print mad design duo's expanding homewares range excites me greatly. And it's not for the faint-hearted...



This is my favourite of the wallpaper designs that the

Spotlight on... writer and stylist, Joanna Thornhill

I've been meaning to feature Joanna Thornhill's excellent budget-savvy interiors book, Home For Now, ever since it came out, earlier this year. 



Worth the wait, I think: I quizzed Joanna all about the project, her surprising Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen love, her own "home for now" – and rinsed her for lots of clever tips for style on a shoestring. 





The beautifully designed and photographed

Real homes: a designer's £800 total renovation

Bobby Petersen's amazingly thrifty warehouse flat in north London filled me with inspiration when I went to nose around it a few months back.

I was there to write about his place for a piece published in last weekend's Guardian Weekend mag. You can read that here, but here are some bonus pictures of his insanely creative ideas.



The flat was a derelict, one-room warehouse space when Bobby,

Real homes: inside an Eric Lyons span apartment

I'm a little bit obsessed with the architect Eric Lyons' work. The 1968-built house I live in is my local authority's version of his celebrated (and now listed) 1950s designs for Span Developments.

If you were a fan of the BBC's Great Interior Design Challenge a few months back, you'll have seen the kitchen makeovers the contestants did on the kitchens in a Span development.






The

Spotlight on... themed playing cards

Contributing editor, Abi, gives very good gift. 

And she's just pulled off a double-whammy with two beautiful sets of playing cards. A while back, she gave me this most excellent John Hinde Cornwall-themed set.







Hinde's studio, in case you don't share my – and Martin Parr's – obsession with it, is the prolific producer of pretty much every British holiday postcard you've ever bought –

Spotlight on... photography for walls

I love a framed beach photograph.

And this one, taken on a packed Bondi looks great in a clean white frame on a white wall, don't you think?






The photograph is by Louisa Seton and part of a limited edition of 500 for sale in this A1 size at the reasonable price of £50, from a new company called Lumitrix.




It reminds me a little of this, which I featured in a previous post.

Good,

The Insider: big idea, small budget?

Do you remember last year's BBC2 show, The House That £100k Built? Are you planning – or dreaming of – a home project (even a tiny one) that could feature in its new, spin-off series?

The new show will include small-scale projects – new bathrooms, or even just a different room layout. And the show's makers are currently casting for anyone with an idea in mind who would like some design expertise

Spotlight on... the Sight Unseen shop

After writing about a Sight Unseen competition last week, I discovered the online US craft magazine has a shop dedicated to selling hand-made products by artists and designers.

The shop has recently extended its remit from just selling wearables to including a few very nice homewares, all produced in tiny batches.



These mugs are designed by former print-maker, Josephine Heilpern under the

Freestyle Wednesday: mix colours like a pro

When I visited Home 2014 a couple of weeks ago, I finally met Tania James, one half of colourful design duo, Quirk and Rescue. 

It reminded me that I've long meant to post a photo of Q&R's rather amazing geometric Wundt wallpaper.



For starters, I like the paper itself (more details of which below). But also, I love how their photograph of it in situ is styled. It throws out all preconceptions

Shopping: Branksome china

We've had a beautiful, teak glass-fronted display cabinet up on the kitchen wall since before Christmas. We still can't decide what to put into it.

All the stuff that actually needs to go in it for storage, doesn't add up to much of a display (as you can see here). So the pondering continues for now. It needs to combine practicality with beauty. Like this...





I love this bit of styling from

Impulse buy of the week: a toucan shaped lamp

Ah yes, we've all been there: car boot, chucking it down with rain, no bargains in sight when suddenly your 'phone rings; it's the other half: "Where are you? I've found something fabulous..."

So off I trot, past the tarpaulins and rain sodden traders to find the husband. And here's what we bought:



Yes. A floor lamp in the shape of a toucan. Don't ask me why, don't ask me how. I think it was

Wishing I was here: the perfect country getaway?

No posts for the rest of this week, as I'm on holiday... on the Isle of Wight. You may have read about black leather sofa-gate the other week, when we were first looking for a UK cottage to stay in. 

Well, we found a decent place with friendly furniture – but it wasn't a patch on this which, typically, I discovered too late. But for anyone else planning a southern British break...



This is The

Geraldine James's new book: Creative Spaces

If you liked Supermarket Sarah's colourful and inspiring book about display, Wonder Walls, you might like this too. 

The spirit behind Creative Spaces (Cico Books), the final in a trio that also includes Creative Walls and Creative Display, isn't far off. It's about beautiful interiors, yes, but not necessarily fashionable ones.



Just clever, inspired and often slightly batty ones (I haven't

Make like an interiors magazine: tips from the pros (but don't take it too seriously)

We've covered both the pros and the cons of styling your house to look as picture perfect as a magazine shoot here before. 



While us interiors obsessives may fantasise about having our homes gracing the pages of some glossy magazine, there's always the risk of over-styling – but there are still some basic aesthetics that can make your place sparkle, without taking it all too seriously and

Le lovely styling of Petit Nicolas

Ever picked a film chiefly because you like the design? It's partly on that basis that I really want to see Petit Nicolas, a sweet-looking French film set in 1950s Paris that came out a couple of years ago. 



The 2009 film, which hit British screens only last summer, somehow passed me by. But it has just been on at my tiny local cinema (Whirledart in Loughborough Junction in case you are south

The best fireplace in the world?

Yeah, it's totally the wrong time of the year to be showing you a fireplace, I know. But when I discovered this wonderful work of art (quite literally) I had to give it an unseasonal share.

The fireplace is designed by the Cincinnati-based Rookwood Pottery Company, founded in 1880 by Maria Longworth Nichols and the first female-owned US manufacturing company. And I can't imagine liking a

A 1950s colour palette in Memphis

Just been trying to file the rest of my holiday photos from the epic US road trip we did last month. The filing has been as epic as the trip, as I'd just bought a new camera – new toy and all that. 

Anyway, just came across the photos of the 1950s interior at a cafe we went to in Memphis. The Arcade Cafe is the oldest in the city, so the menu informed us (relatively modern by British standards,

Clerkenwell Design Week: last day

If you're in London, and skiving off this afternoon – or around before 9pm this evening in the Clerkenwell vicinity, you still have the chance to check out the CDW exhibitions before they close, tonight.

There are three major ones in different buildings. And if you only do two, I would recommend first, the one in the Farmiloe Building... but mainly for the building itself.



This former