Decorating inspiration please

[NotAllIndividuals]

Going to revamp the house so looking for inspiration and failing. There's so much grey these days, has fifty shades been taken literally by home owners? Is it a backlash against the Llywellyn-Bowen purple and big prints era?

Any suggestions on good books or magazines I can browse to get some ideas?

For reference the house is a very standard 50's semi so no fancy period features to capitalise on.

I like the Houzz website and app for inspiration. They have thousands of images which you can filter by style and room. Save your favourites and soon you get a strong feel for what you are after

Pinterest - lots of inspiration.

Pinterest is great. You can type any crackpot decorating idea into the search bar and someone, somewhere will have done it and made it look good.

Otherwise I've found Elle Decoration quite good for ideas, though if you're not a millionaire you do then need to go hunting for normally priced equivalents to the stuff you like. (They also seem to feature mainly the houses of people who own no functional stuff, though I suppose that's standard for the field.)

Ah yes, with a dog and an 8 month old we need function and form. Show homes are lovely and all but this place needs to be designed for punishment (not the 50 shades type).

I would say that how a wall paint colour looks on you walls is unique- so magazines are only good up to a point. The direction of light coming in your windows depends on which way it faces, whether there are over shadowing trees or buildings, also what time of day you are in the room. So last time I chose paint I must have had 12 pots of paint samples to try. And matched them to curtains etc. Start with this and slapareas of colour on the walls.