Home Interiors

Craft Queen, DIY fanatic, interior designer and busy Mum - Danielle Proud, is on a mission to revive the nation’s love of carpet with ‘Fun on the Floor’, a new campaign, that redefines the art of carpeting, through showing the latest and greatest new ideas in fluffy flooring in a completely new light . Using traditional carpet, as well as the latest new designs and technologies, Danielle is pioneering the ‘Fun on the Floor’ movement by curating and designing a stunning, five storey house to showcase modern, super-stylish and luxurious applications for carpeting.

Mydeco has announced the arrival of the hottest design source in the world of interiors, with the launch of Design Boutique on June 5 2008. The new area on mydeco.com/design-boutique showcases exclusive and limited edition products from an eclectic collection of renowned British designers many of which are not available elsewhere online.

Sales of striped carpets have increased by 200%* this year as influences from the fashion world continue to infiltrate interior design, providing exciting, hip flooring options for the home. Leading fashion designers such as Paul Smith play a key role in inspiring the bold colour palettes now available in striped carpet collections. These new styles are grabbing headlines in the world of interiors and cladding the coolest floors across the country. Bright coloured stripes can add a hip edge to neutrally decorated rooms, or make a subtle impact, complementing different scale striped soft furnishings.

A new Kitchens & Bathrooms Showcase will bring together suppliers and buyers in an inspirational and informative setting at Interbuild 2008. With Gordon Brown pledging to provide three million new homes by the year 2020 - and a target of over one million homes to be built in the next five years – near 20,000 visitors attended Interbuild 2007 to specifically source innovative, attractive, cost-effective and sustainable solutions for the home environment.

It’s easy to see why Victoria Baths, situated in the Manchester district of Chorlton-cum-Medlock, won the 2003 BBC Restoration challenge and just as easy to understand why the complex internal works require the touch of skilled craftsmen including Leeds-based traditional and fibrous plastering specialists Ornate Interiors.

With the Chinese Olympics only weeks away, it’s time to think ‘Chinoiserie’ when it comes to decorating your home for summer parties. Step in Nouvelles Images whose fantastic Home Stickers range includes a design called Lanterns. The design is colourful, stylish and versatile so you can string your Chinese lanterns any way you want. Along with the rest of the range, these are brilliantly bold ‘decoupage’ stickers that glide on with ease and remove with no damage to your existing walls.

The longer days of early summer bring with them fresh energy for revitalising our homes. However, if the current climate is making you hold back on big decorating jobs then why not take a leaf out of Delia’s book and cheat? A current trend is to highlight just one wall in the room. Using wallpaper on just one wall can be highly effective, and to make the job easier, Nouvelles Images is leading this fashion for interior wall decoration with its new Home Stickers range.

Falling house prices, plummeting home loans and a stagnant housing market can only mean one thing - most of us either can't or won't be moving in the near future. So staying put and doing up where we currently live is now top of most the agenda for most people.

Polly & Prince launched just this month and present a beautiful collection of hand picked accessories for both you and the interior of your home. Whether your home is traditional or ultra modern you will find something special to give your favourite room an instant facelift. Try the Plain Jane bedlinen with contrasting piping to create an impact, or be bold and experiment with hand illustrated design and ensure you are never boring in bed!

Harvest Country Homes’ latest development of 35 showpiece houses in rural Monikie, near Dundee, ooze quality and craftsmanship, but while the exteriors boast solid traditional quality materials and the interiors display carpentry and design at their peak, these homes also have high technology coursing through their walls. The houses are equipped with the latest smart home technology from Square D, a brand of Schneider Electric.

After taking the time to choose the perfect wood-burning stove for your home, stylish accessories are key to completing the look. Leading heating stove distributor Euroheat recommends its range of floor plinths to complement stoves and protect the surrounding flooring.

We all love lazing by a pool, sunning ourselves on a beach watching the world pass us by. Why not recreate this tranquillity at home with Allposters.co.uk the world’s largest online art and poster store.

2008 has seen a revival of 70’s style across the board. High-waisted, wide leg trousers and floaty, floral maxi dresses litter the fashion magazines, while Eagles and Led Zeppelin concerts are selling out nationwide.

Arctic Products is promoting an innovation in affordable diamond drills, specially designed to enable every plumber, tile fixer, bathroom and kitchen installer to quickly and safely cut holes through expensive porcelain tiles and mosaics without the need for drilling rigs or cooling water and with no risk of damage to the tile.

The outlook for the housing market may be getting gloomier by the day but homeowners need to stay positive. Whilst recent research suggests that, this year, improving rather than moving is the focus, clever homeowners know that the right home improvements can add real value to a property - and often don't require a big financial outlay or months to complete. The organisers of The Scottish Homebuilding & Renovating Show, which is at the SECC, Glasgow on 17 & 18 May, have got some great tips for anyone who is looking to improve their home with a view to selling in the near future.