How to create a coastal style
wherever you live One thing you will soon notice is that creating a coastal style can take many forms, it can be very cool and chic, or it can be more rustic and natural, if you choose the latter, its important to recognise the difference between shabby chic and messy chic. Done well it can create a wonderful natural feel, done badly; it can just look like a collection of clutter gathering dust. The secret is to combine the colours with the textures and to take the theme through the room, or rooms. Often less equals more, so think carefully about how you want to arrange your accessories, or collections.
Much of creating coastal style is about textures, wonderfully smooth pebbles, gritty sand, bits of driftwood, glass smoothed by years of being The mind has amazing powers, feed it with tossed onto the shore. certain information and it can create its own illusions. When I am working with groups I often take a picture in with me to help stimulate creative thought. It is a painting with a turquoise background and a narrow gold line running through the middle. I hold it up and ask the group to describe what they see, without fail in every group, most people will say, the sky, the sea, and a beach, or a desert island, rarely will anyone say it’s a canvas with turquoise background and a gold line. You don’t have to take the theme throughout your whole house or flat, the coastal palette naturally There are certain colours, which are evocative lends itself to bathrooms and this is an area that of the coast, shades of blue, shades of white, can easily be managed as a first step. Here is shades of cream through to yellow. Added into an opportunity to add glassware, or pebbles, this can be the brighter colours of buckets and or a lighthouse, boat or other nautical object. spades, lighthouses, deckchairs. There are several shops that specialise in coastal, or nautical themes, and there are three If you want to create a coastal feel then a good wonderful examples in our This Month We Love: place to start is to create a style board. With limited time it is all too easy to rush off to the www.gardentrading.co.uk nearest DIY centre grab some paint and get www.beachhut.co.uk started. Building a style board can be much www.nautical-living.co.uk more fun, buy some magazines that can give you inspiration, e.g. Coast, Country Living, If you want to change your colour scheme Farrow Condé Nast Traveller, or other interior design and Ball have a great selection www.farrowmagazines. In our This Month We Love we have ball.com Another way of creating a coastal featured two fabulously inspirational books theme is by incorporating nautical tiles into the Coastal Style and The Way We Live: By the Sea. decorating, we also featured Reptile Tiles www. This stage can be great fun, gathering colour reptiletiles.co.uk and they have a wonderful pots, testing out colours, getting fabric swatches, collection of very unusual tiles and they will work gathering pictures, looking to create the same with you on special commissions, large, or small. look and feel of living by the sea. Although more As more and more us are turning our bathrooms and more people are opting to live by the sea, into a sanctuary for relaxation, developing a you can create the same feeling wherever you coastal feel can also be extended across the live. senses for example, through fragrances, or