Other Articles

Ship to Shore

Jill Evans explains that even if you don’t live on the coast, your décor can reflect your passion for things nautical.

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Jill Evans explains how daring wallpapers can liven up the interior design of your home.

Outdoor Retreat

Designer Jill Evans explains how to create a beautiful summerhouse in your garden.

Mirror Mirror

Create an illusion of space and light.

Prints Charming

Jill Evans demonstrates how beautiful fabrics can add character and personality to your home.

Cheery Welcome

Prepare your home for guests arriving this Christmas with these ideas from Jill Evans

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Give your house the best chance of selling with these tips from Jill Evans.

Totally Floored

Interior design expert Jill Evans discusses how to choose flooring that will best suit your house.

Lighten Up

Jill Evans suggests how best to make your house light and airy this spring

Now that winter is over many people will be keen to make their homes much lighter. Light, especially natural light, is really important to one’s sense of well- being. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to improve the house to make it light and airy — some of which are easy and inexpensive and some which will take a little more effort and money.

The obvious place to start is the windows. Those swags and tails, heavy fringes and frills, deep pelmets, and curtains that partly cover the window take up much too much light unless you are planning a dramatically dark dining room. The secret is to expose as much glass as possible during the day, maximising the light in such a way that still makes it cosy at night and in the winter. There are several ways to do this. The simplest, neatest, smartest and often cheapest way is to have roman blinds. These also have the added benefit of making your room look larger, which generally means lighter too. When pulled up, make sure the folds are as high up as possible so they cover very little of the top of the glass.

Inside Spaces, with showrooms in Kingspridge and Exmouth, have excellent displays of many types of curtain treatments. They also supply sliding panels, which are extremely versatile, especially for large areas of glass. These can be stacked right back or pulled across at intervals, or right across, thus giving you full control of the light. For fIoor-length curtains, make sure the curtain pole or track extends sufficiently at either side of the window so that the curtains (which should be generously wide) are roughly parallel to the edge of the window frame during the day, only overlapping the glass just a little.

It is quite staggering the difference a tin of paint and a bit of effort will make to a room especially if you tackle the darkest, largest areas first. For instance, should you have doors, cupboards or a ceiling in 1970s knotty pine era dark stain, a few coats of light-coloured paint (after applying ‘knotting’) will greatly increase the lightness of the room. Good duality paints, like the ones from The Little Greene Paint Company, have mere pigment in them se increasing the coverage and giving an appealing light-reflecting chalky finish. Large pieces of dark furniture, such as bedroom wardrobes, always leek heavy and make the room feel dark and cluttered, but the very same piece painted with a couple of coats of light paint will make it less noticeable and the room will seem lighter and mere spacious. lf it is painted exactly the same colour as the‘ walls then it will almost disappear from view as it blends with the walls. However, antique furniture or fixtures should generally be left well alone.

A few coats of a light wall colour will of course help the light quality of any room. Mirrors in a dark hall, for example, will bounce the light in just the same way as photographers use their silver reflectors to softly light up a face during portrait photography.

Other large areas that are easily Iightened up include bedcovers or bedlinen. Just throwing a new light— coloured bedcover ever the bed will transform the bedroom in an instant, especially with lovely white pillowcases.

Although it may seem a little extravagant, just for the summer months you could consider light—coloured linen loose covers for your existing sofas or chairs, and you may find you end up keeping them en all year. Romo have a wonderful washable linen union (Linara) that comes in ever 200 colours.

Light entering a room from another room or hall can make an incredible difference to the lightness of both rooms, so although it will take a little time and expense, it is well worth installing a part- glazed door. Howdens have a new four panel Shaker-style glazed door in a design that would suit many styles of home.

Rather mere major improvements, although possibly net as expensive as you may think, are skylights and sun tubes. Velux skylight windows can transform a previously useless gloomy area into something really useful and inviting. Sun tubes or solar tubular skylights are really innovative and in effect steal a bit of sun from the roof to brighten dark spaces. How wonderful to have a beam of real sunlight shining down into a windowless corridor or kitchen!

Whether you make just a few simple changes or really go to town, maximising as much natural light all you can will lighten the mood whatever the weather.

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