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!

Feature wall wallpaper. It looks awful without fail. 'Not mine!' You protest... but no. Always.

Ditto feature walls in general. You can get away with a strong coloured wall in very limited circumstances and most of those involve ceilings the height of the average stately home. Not a suburban semi in Slough.

Carpets. Loathe, loathe , loathe carpets. Disgusting things. Especially in a country where people wear shoes indoors (savages!!!)

Those 'in this house we do Disney ' wall decals

Shag pile rugs

Leather sofas that are baggy (ancient library chesterfield types get a pass.) it's like sitting on a shaved deflated animal.

Letters on stuff (LOVE) etc.

Most wallpaper

Did I mention carpets? Carpets (shudder.)

Feature walls are my pet hate and words on walls too .

But the weirdest thing I ever saw in s big beautiful Victorian house were rag dolls everywhere . All the way up both sides of the staircase and on all the surfaces and every chair. It was a bit spooky ....

Wow, imagine being revolted by carpets. Life must be tough.

Staged family photoshoots..... particularly if they have soft focus or shiny lipgloss

Bloody cushions and pillows everywhere!

Curtains that trail on the floor as they are too long,
Tab top curtains that are not wide enough for the window so are stretched out across the window with no gathers,
Enormous TV's which are too big for the room they are in and give you motion sickness as you're sat so close,
Decals on the wall.
I've got one of those ceramic words 'Bath' in my bathroom and this thread has just helped me realise how bloody horrible it actually is

Although I agree on most points.... I'd love to know how you lot do decorate your homes - anybody willing to tell? WHAT THEMES ARE OK? So much easier to criticise than to stick your head above the parapet, innit?

My walls are all white, I have parquet floors and framed pics that we took ourselves, lots of gaudy art that we have bought on our travels, and a big 70s furniture influence. Books loosely arranged by topic on 7 or 8 Billys. Everything on walls, not a single ornament in the whole house. A few big plants, but nothing overwhelming.

Not wanting to sound dismissive, but 4 bookcases isn't very much! Even if they are fullsize Billy things from Ikea with height extensions. Try doing it with 4-5 times as many books spread across a whole range of publishers, so not just the liveries of, say, historical fiction! It quickly becomes impossible unless a book is very specific or you have a totally photographic memory. Also, soooo many academic books have very similar looking white/cream or blue spines.

You quickly need to start grouping them by discipline (philosophy, history, fiction, geography) and alphabetically by author. I sometimes even forget I actually own a book, and buy a second copy by accident. It's all complicated by the fact that DH and I also have offices full of books, so even determining whether something is at home or not can be a nightmare. Fortunately, we are investing in a library in the near future.

I'll hand it to you - there's very little humble in that brag.

Wow, imagine being revolted by carpets. Life must be tough.

The struggle is real Mrs. M (nods sagely.)

Seriously though, people react with horror to British carpets - Here it's hard flooring and utterly taboo to wear shoes indoors.

There's plenty of 'old money' stuff on my list:

Plates with hunting scenes
Elephant foot umbrella stands - I don't care if great uncle Monty shot it in 1904, that's grim
Rooms full of oppressively dark furniture

And what's wrong with colourful toasters? These are objects of desire! www.themadegoodshop.co.uk/the-forever-toaster.html

SouthChinaMorningPost

I've themed our guest bedroom around the TV series "Dynasty".

Just kidding.

Honestly, you can theme however you want. Our study/office is themed like an old-fashioned library we saw in a stately home once and I LOVE IT.

HipHopFrog

I LOVE that cat wallpaper.

Anything you like is ok. No one else has to live there. It's like food.

Seriously though, people react with horror to British carpets - Here it's hard flooring and utterly taboo to wear shoes indoors.

The poor loves. Imagine living somewhere the height of taboo was whether people were shod or unshod when indoors.

Sounds a bit dull.

I love the cat wallpaper and recognised it at once as I have a slight Bloomsbury group obsession.

Some people just want to see your naked feet.

I love my metro tiles, mainly because we have white ones with grey grout. No more dirty white grout. Suits my cleaning style

Elephant foot umbrella stands - I don't care if great uncle Monty shot it in 1904, that's grim

Grim as fuck. Plus these days when I think of elephant hunters I think of Dumb as Fuck I and Dumb as Fuck II i.e. awful sons of Trump.

Thanks BabychamSocialist. My 6 year old does too and that's what matters..

I looked at the price of that toaster, £160 and thought 'outrageous!' but then I read their spiel and they won me over in about 15 seconds!

ScrumDinger I guarantee you'll have walked though dog shit without noticing, even if the owner attempted to pick it up. It's now ground into your carpet.

I don't even like the nod to the safari style with the papier-mâché animal heads people have mounted on walls.

ScrumDinger but yes, agreed, life to too short to sweat the small things and probably no one died of a dirty carpet. Glad you like the toaster!

Oh I'm not getting into one of those fractious shoes on/shoes off debates. I just do not care about all those terrible germs on the street. Not one of my kids has died yet. Result! And I'd rather go on risking their lives and limbs rather than be one of those people.