To ask your interior design pet hates?

[Lotsofsausage]

Am I a horrible snob?
Here are mine:
Bowls of pebbles on coffee table (why?)
Black and diamanté furniture
Photos printed onto canvas (CRAP quality just get a good photographic print and frame it!)
Those shiny duvet sets and cushions
Fire surround but no fire place (not) even a hole in the wall!

I just don't like new stuff.

feature wall.

In 10 years will look the same as artexed ceilings of the 60s.

Stickered slogans on the wall that say things like "don't hide from the storm, learn to dance in the rain" in a naff curly font, and those "our house rules" wall hangings that tell you that in this house we dance like no one is watching, live in the moment and follow our dreams. So bad

I actually love most of these decor ideas!!! My old house had netural walls and furniture and then a feature colour per room, every room was a different colour

I also love the dangly hearts and sparkly door knobs ... my new house (get keys Friday yaaay!!) is a new build and has been done white walls and grey floors everywhere..... perfect to put my colours in on top (remind me not to invite any of you lot over for tea!!! lol!!)

The things that really get to me are, clashing colours in same roon (blue carpet red curtians etc) really dark wood furniture, skirting and radiators that aren't white gloss, those silly carpets that only go up the centre of stairs and bare wooden polished floor boards .... I've basically described my mother in laws house lmao! Xx

I also had a feature wall in my old house, the chimney breast had magnolia paper on it with red and gold hearts and slogans like when it's dark look for stars live laugh love when it rains look for rainbows etc

The stupid fad for wallpapering 1 feature wall usually with some hideous flowery wallpaper that you'll be sick of in about a year.
Random words or quotes or sayings that people have on walls i.e. "Live the life you love" or "bake" or "love"
Urgh

I think 100% tastefulness is well....distasteful. You've got to have 10% kitsch in there.

And whoever mentioned 70s yellow and brown daisies, I love that stuff. We inherited a downstairs loo with this sort of paper, even on the ceiling and I will not be changing it.

I hate pillows propped up at a 90 degree angle from the bed. What's THAT about? Often also found in upscale hotels

• Feature walls look like people are trying to hard
• Slogans, I agree
• Buddhas - why oh why would you have this in your home if you are not Buddhist or religious???? Dont get this trend.
• Showhome styling (3 balls on a shelf, bowl, etc)

But I do have brand new, plush wall to wall carpets and they are a dream to walk on. My floorboards are not nice and would cost a fortune to replace in somewhere that I plan to move from in a year or so. Thats my justification anyway, I love carpets but do change them every few years.

I think I'm over interior design angst, period. I have had a few friends who spent a year angsting about their kitchens, their redecorating plans. Stop the drama, choose something. Obviously if budget is an issue and there's work you NEED to do, I can see how you need to invest loads of time in it. But if you're minted with no tremendous deadline, please for the love of GOD, stop banging on as if it's some sort of crisis. Just get on with it, it's decorating. You're life isn't going to be fundamentally different whatever tile you choose. We aren't minted but no I am not jealous. It took me a grand total of 45 minutes to choose my kitchen in Magnet. Job done, move along.

Anything "glitzy" - chandeliers in new houses etc. cheap laminate floors, cheap, unlined curtains, vertical blinds, feature walls, artificial/dried flowers, leather sofas, wedding photos hanging on walls, gloss kitchens - the list is endless.

How could I forget, not only is the ceiling and top half of wall papered in 70s flowers, the curtains match exactly....comme ça:

Think I'm cancelling tonight's outing - this is going to be a good 'un!

Practically all of the above.

Some plastic plants.

Net curtains (we have muslin blinds, do they count?)

Tissue box or loo paper covers.
NicolasFlamel I love magnolia. Our decorator loves me! Jennyhatesajzz0 My appliances are all chrome, does that count?

SO MANY. I should point out that in addition to being a massive interior design snob who would never voice any of these to people I know, I also have committed some of these crimes against design.

• Feature walls. Just go for it. If it's too much for the room, it won't look good on one wall, will it?
• Shiny, slithery bedspreads.
• Breakfast bars (I don't want to perch on a fucking stool while I drink coffee, thanks. I will never understand why anyone puts these in.).
• Words on walls, cushions etc.
• Nautical themes.
• In fact, themed rooms of any kind.
• Flags on soft furnishings, especially the Union Jack.
• Family photographs framed and hung on walls. This always looks terrible unless the pictures are by David Bailey and your children are model-beautiful.
• Bifold doors. They go wrong all the time, they're a bugger when you want to let the cat out, they give you a view of the entire garden so you can't hide the ugly bits and if the sun shines on them the kitchen becomes a giant greenhouse. They look horrific with curtains/blinds.
• Rugs that are too small for the rooms they're in.
• Lighting that casts its own shadow.
• Feature lighting that hangs too low (often over a breakfast bar).
• Ugly radiators that are a 'feature' of the room.
• Very bright colours used as an accent throughout a room, such as lime green, teal or purple.
• Furniture that very obviously comes from one shop. (I write this sitting in a flat that looks like an IKEA catalogue)
• Too much good taste and not enough personality. Bland is as bad as over the top.
• Too much furniture in a room. Edit.
• Chair rails picked out in a different colour to the rest of the wall. It looks like a sandwich.
• Curtains that hide architectural detailing.
• Design fakes (so many cheap wishbone chairs). Save up for the real thing. The value of an item is in more than how it looks - it's how it's made and how much pleasure you take in it that matters.
• Rooms that aren't fit for purpose, like when the bedside table is a mile away from the bed and there's no lighting near enough to let you read in bed.
• Picture lights. In a modern home your art doesn't need extra lighting.
• Those enormous coffee tables with wrought iron bits and fat legs.
• Painted furniture. If it's junk, it just looks like painted junk. If it's not junk, don't cover it in claggy leftover Farrow and Ball, please.
• Conservatories. I've never seen a nice one.

I went with a friend to The Range. Actually I love this shop as it's very good value, especially for craft stuff. But we were in stitches over all the items with instructional words, there are just so many, including the black transfers of 'life affirming' quotes to stick on your walls. We were reading them out and pissing ourselves laughing. Best entertainment for ages. We got some funny looks.
Apparently they can be a bugger to get off the walls, but I saw a tip that if you heat them up with a hairdrier, they melt and you can scrape them off easily, so there's no excuse now, is there?

Flugel

Have to disagree about bifold doors. I have a tiny garden and you can open them all the way (unlike other kinds of doors) and sit in the garden without actually sitting in the garden.

Suspect they'll date horribly (like patio doors from the '70s), and you don't want to catch your heel in ones as you shut the door.. but as far as practicality goes, they are ace

I don't mind what people have, whatever makes them happy. I am an ex interior decorator and people's tastes and fashions fluctuate so much. Personally I like good fine art and interesting eclectic stuff to look at and a great deal of comfort.

I detest words as decoration- wall decals, wooden signs, all this LOVE, SOAK, EAT eurgh. Vile

NotYoda I know what you mean about being able to open up the back of the house but it depends which way your house faces and what kind of garden you have - if you have a teeny one, it's more like an outdoor room, and I can see how you'd want to open it up altogether. I know people who have twenty feet of bifold doors across the back of their houses with a standard suburban garden full of children's toys. It's not fun to look at and unless you leave one door hanging open it's much too hot all day.

Flugel

Yes, I agree with that. I would not have wanted all that glass in that situation.

Live Laugh Love signs
Got one in secret Santa last Christmas, useless tat.
I survive, am miserable and hate everything!

Oh my goodness - between me and my teenage dd we have quite a lot of things listed 😬Although twee signs are in her room, seaside things in her bathroom.
I do have a bowl of stones each picked up from beaches and holiday/special places but no one knows that as I don't tend to explain them!!! Have a few hearts around as well and owls.

The people next door have a big wooeden FAMILY in the window.

They do nothing but argue and shout, never go out and the dh spends every waking moment in the local pub!!

This is what I think of these

Any mirrored furniture - the horror cleaning the fingerprints from that. And those grey crushed velvet sofas and chairs. Or anything in crushed velvet.