If you’re thinking of buying a new sofa in the January sales, or indeed at any time, you might want to reconsider. Did you know sofas are highly toxic? So toxic in fact that the end of a sofa’s life, when you take it to the tip it is now classified as hazardous waste and incinerated. When the sofa was sold to you it wasn’t classed as hazardous waste though, was it?! As a consumer you would rightly expect anything you buy to perfectly safe, but unfortunately the Flame Retardant chemicals used in modern upholstery foams and fabrics are known to affect the endocrine system, the thyroid, the meta ..read more

“Interior design isn’t just about how it looks.” I’m always saying that! Our interior spaces impact both our mental and our physical health. They can uplift and inspire us, help us rest and relax, promote concentration or even play, but they can also push up our cortisol levels and even poison us over time, so interior design is a really powerful for improving our wellbeing. Terri Pugh, intuitive eating and body confidence coach, invited me on to her podcast to chat about Interior Design for Wellbeing. Here’s what we cover: How do well-designed spaces help promote positive emotions and crea ..read more

Presenter: Simon Parfett Interior Designer: Zoe Hewett Carpenter: Ian Tsang You might have seen that My Unique B&B came back to BBC2 recently for Series Two. This year designer and presenter Simon Parfett took me along with carpenter Ian Tsang to some more fantastically unusual rural locations. Sharing interior design duties across the 15 episodes with Verity Coleman of Rascal & Roses studio we had a lot of fun transforming all sorts of glamping structures. Read on for an insight into the work that goes in to each design. Faith’s Geodome Faith and her team worked i ..read more

Between last year’s lockdowns I had the pleasure and privilege of designing interiors for Plimsoll Productions’ BBC2 show My Unique B&B. Working alongside presenter and treehouse designer Simon Parfett and carpenter Ian Tsang, together we transformed unusual glamping sites inside and out. It was a huge amount of fun and hard work and you can catch all the episodes on BBC iplayer and read on for an insight about my interior design contribution. The design brief for Cheryl & Bill’s Hilltop Chalet was to give it Scandinavian style and to connect it to the landscape. Inspired by the Swed ..read more

(c) Henar Langa Cottagecore might just be the best-named home decor trend of all time. The idea of blending the quaint and benign world of cottages with anything remotely hardcore in a single word had me chuckling right from the start. At first glance it might seem like a romanticised collection of traditional English country florals, but this design aesthetic is way more sassy than that. It’s actually punk to the, well, core. Trends are rarely only about how something looks and most often a reflection of public mood, and this is no exception. By no means a new trend, Cottagecore has been gro ..read more

Sustainable interior design products are becoming increasingly important as we fight climate change and the plastic crisis. Happily there is plenty of good work being done in this area to make progress and one young designer’s solution and contribution has really caught my eye. Keiran Devlin, a product design graduate from UWE and founder of Revive Innovations, has found a way to rescue and repurpose waste CDs before they reach landfill. Transforming them into a new material called RE:CD, that is not only recycled but reusable Kieran is able to make all sorts from furniture to kitchen counter ..read more

As a huge fan of radio (especially BBC Radio 6music and Radio 4) I was delighted to be invited to talk to Laura Rawlings of BBC Radio Bristol today. We covered half a dozen news stories that had caught my eye this week and most of them are so visual I thought I’d pop the links on here so listeners / readers can SEE what we were chatting about. You can listen back to Laura’s show here and if you are pushed for time skip to 2 hours 10 minutes in for our chat. First up, we talked about handy hints on how to maximise your chances of achieving new year’s resolutions, and it seems like the main ing ..read more

(c) Hangtime Studio Woven wall hangings are increasingly popular. You’ll find them all over Pinterest made from yarns of every conceivable size, colour and texture but if all that asymmetrical, rustic and whimsical wool is not your cup of tea then you might prefer those made by Hangtime Studio. Based in Edinburgh and run by Ria Beeson, Hangtime produces decorative wall hangings with a geometric style that appeals more to lovers of clean lines and contemporary looks. The flag like shape of some pieces, combined with the wooden suspension rod along the top, harks back to protest banners of time ..read more

(c) Annie Spratt There’s a niche for every conceivable thing in interior design, even wallpaper. Especially wallpaper! From experts in Chinese wallpaper, English Heritage designs and different pattern types to various fabrication techniques, specialist ink and paint and the conservation of wallpaper… within the wonderful world of wallpaper there is an expert for every detail and even more enthusiasts to match. The Wallpaper History Society brings many of these folk together both online and offline for events and exhibitions celebrating, exploring and educating about everything wallpaper from ..read more

(c) Jacky Puzey The Bristol interior design community is made up of some heavyweight talents of which Jacky Puzey is just one. An eminent textile artist exhibiting all over the UK and internationally Jacky specialises in contemporary bespoke machine embroidery and her work is, simply put, stunning. Following a career spanning fine art, photography, costume and pattern cutting Jacky gained a PhD in Fashion, Textiles & Visual Culture and honed her production methods and signature style. It is quite a process to get from initial design research and sketches to creating digitally produced art ..read more