How to look at Everything differently and unlock your forever interior style
The instinct behind what we love is ultimately deeply value-led
Strategist and content creator Francesca Swan is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on the concept of 'Everything' and what makes a home special to you. See the rest of her articles here.
As our renovation finally winds up, I’ve got a LOT of decisions to make and, in truth, I’m overwhelmed and losing my confidence.
My fatigued, yet over-active ADHD brain is tying me in knots – an unhelpful, yet familiar feeling. My go-to method of unpicking said knots is panic buying and snap decisions. Cue multiple time-consuming returns and a redecorating job in the kitchen.
That aside, thankfully life is a little calmer now, creating the bandwidth to start som very overdue deep therapy. It’s challenging work, but also brilliantly rewarding.
I’m getting to know myself, learning to be more open, connect more honestly and better understand my feelings and experiences. In turn, it’s changing how I see the world.
You’d be forgiven for wondering how this is relevant to our Ideal Home universe. However, this personal epiphany has already rippled through my last column on renovation lessons, where I was more brutally honest than ever been before.
That was difficult. I agonise over what people think of me and what to share. Now I feel more able to put this self-doubt aside, and share the full, unfiltered truth about my renovation and design experiences and who I am.
Call it Francesca 2.0 and gird your loins. Let us hope you all find my truth-dumps enjoyable, interesting, and/or useful. I would quite like to keep this gig!
Anyway, now the topic in hand…
I’ve been thinking a lot about my style lately. Can I define and use it to keep my home feeling true to me?
“How do you describe your style?” is a frequent conversation on Instagram. Some people have one neat sentence, whilst others, like me, struggle to find the right words.
I had zero idea when decorating our final rental. I simply cut and paste what I saw in the homes of a few zeitgeisty idols.
That can work, yet the risk is not reflecting your true personality or values. Sure enough, that apartment looked fine, but was generic with no sense of meaningful connection, belonging or joy – that essential intuition I now call my Everything feeling.
There’s a questionable collection of cityscape pictures still gathering dust in our storage – tell me you decorated in the 2010s without telling me you decorated in the 2010s. We lived with them for five years, but they were bought to fill a space and had no meaning.
Then late the other night, my mind noisily reshuffling my to-do list and fingers itching to shop for things we definitely didn’t need, I had a blindingly obvious, head-in-hands realisation. Although my interior style is hard to pin down, it always starts with my Everything pieces that feel innately true to me and make sure my home does too.
Pulling it back to this calmed and focused me.
Yet what is the difference between discovering a true Everything piece and the fleeting, dopamine-fuelled rush of a well-styled “must-have” mirror to match the cushion you’ve also just impulse bought?
It might be a forever piece. Or you might find yourself waiting untold hours for DPD to collect the return. We’ve all been there. Nothing is an exact science, and we don’t always get it right first time.
However, these countless red flags told me I’d lost my way and needed a big step back to properly understand what is important to my style and how I make decisions. I needed an anchor to ground me against panic buys and procrastination.
The goal is to confidently and intentionally fill our homes with personal, inspiring, value led things create an Everything connection with our mind, body and heart
Great. But how?
Pay attention and notice more
I recently visited the wonderful Modo Art Gallery, devoted purely to the remarkable David Hockney – without question my favourite artist since childhood.
Until then, I’d not fully absorbed his recent passing. Not only the loss of this irreplaceable visionary, but also what his work means to me. Viewing “Beneath the Surface: Swimming Pool Exhibition”, was the opportunity I needed.
Hockney’s central philosophy was encouraging people to look more carefully at the world around them, and to see and think differently.
What happens when you slow down, pause and pay attention? When you look longer and properly experience the world? When you go deeper beyond what you think you see and know?
I then stumbled on an interesting exercise in being present. Simply pick an object and describe it in purely sensory terms: what you see, feel, smell, hear or taste, without including any wider meaning. It’s tougher than it sounds.
Drinking a cup of coffee, for instance. You can see the steam rising from the dark
brown, slightly translucent liquid. The smell is rich and layered, with chocolate, fruit and something more earthy. The taste is warmly bitter, yet sweet, changing and lingering in your mouth.
It’s a shift in thinking and experiencing, but once you get the hang of it, surprisingly rewarding and rather fun.
Combining this with Hockney’s own words – “the world is far richer, more interesting, and more beautiful than we often allow ourselves to notice” – was a timely wake-up call.
We live in a world with myriad conflicting, often unhelpful things constantly competing for our attention. Social media. Too much choice. Awful news updates incessantly shouting from our phones.
Digital has huge value, but also huge downfalls. It cannot capture light, smell, touch – the beautiful, physical experiences of the world.
It can be overwhelming. We unconsciously start to shut down, blocking out all the noise. Ever feel like you’re on autopilot and an observer in your own life? Yep, me too.
It’s easy to unintentionally stop noticing the things that matter and are fundamental to our sense of self and well-being.
Relaxing outside, enjoying the gently warm late evening sunshine, rays of soft green dappled light filtered through the leaves of an ancient oak tree. The sculptural curves and vibrant colours of a vase won in a furious eBay bidding war.
When we stop noticing beauty and lose sight of what’s important in our world, we can lose confidence creating our homes. Instead, we copy. Follow trends. Buy impulsively. Decorate reactively. But does this reflect us or create our Everything feeling? Not to mention stand the test of time.
If we slow down to intentionally become more present and curious, we can properly capture things we’ve overlooked before.
Why do we repeatedly choose and love certain things? How does that knowledge inform our personal design language and help our homes feel more meaningful, coherent and individual?
By consciously grounding ourselves, we rein in our reactive autopilot and allow our inspiration and confidence to flourish. We can purposefully create from our heart and soul for lasting style and a home that truly feels like us.
My lightbulb moment
In the name of research, I applied this thinking to the Everything pieces in my home to understand what they reveal about me and the design of our apartment.
The findings have been liberating, useful and surprisingly eye-opening – valuable insights to inform my thinking and decision-making as I finish the apartment, but also hugely important for my life in general.
The biggest realisation wasn't about my style. It was about my values.
The pieces that I love aren't connected by a colour palette or design era. They're connected by meaning. They reflect my beliefs, curiosities and how I want to experience the world.
Suddenly things made much more sense.
So, with no further ado, welcome to my personal Everything pieces hall of fame.
Books, magazines and art
Our home is jam-packed with books, magazines and art and my collections will continue to grow.
My Vogue magazine coffee table. Exhibition posters we've loved for years. Pictures of my icons – Joan Didion, Patti Smith and David Bowie. My library, displayed as art in its own right.
They're permanent reminders there's always something new to learn, ideas to explore and perspectives to consider and gentle daily nudges towards thought and inspiration.
There's so much in this world I haven't yet seen and don't know. I want to keep discovering, experiencing as much as possible and constantly feeding my curiosity.
Natural materials
Marble. Wood. Linen. Jute. Limewash. Plants. These trigger something deep within me. They subtly, almost primevally make me feel calmer, more present and emotionally grounded, reminding me of my connection to something bigger and more permanent than myself.
I instinctively knew I wanted a lot of marble in our apartment. I’m fascinated by the age old process of metamorphism that creates this incredibly resilient yet endlessly beautiful material, with its infinite richness of coloured veining and texture.
Our kitchen, bathrooms, hallway, cloakroom and living room all celebrate and remind me of that.
One-of-a-kind pieces
My Everything pieces all tell a story.
The £10 chair bought on Facebook Marketplace 13 years ago, squirrelled away in storage until I finally found a place for it. Now reupholstered in Pierre Frey fabric – a bargain eBay find – it’s an incredible one-off that is also a sentimental snapshot of our life together. It makes me smile and feel grateful.
I love pre-loved objects, imbibed with experiences and memories I can't see but know are there. My brutalist-inspired scrolled metal kitchen chairs never fail to spark momentary glimmers of their rich, mysterious history - what they’ve seen and where they’ve been.
I also adore the thrill of the hunt and a good bargain, not least because I’m on a permanent budget. My brand new Arteriors metal chandelier was bought for a tiny fraction of the retail price and is a constant source of slightly smug pride.
I always shop my home first. The huge live-edge oak desk, made for my old office by an independent maker, didn’t fit when we moved and was relegated to storage. Then inspiration struck. Cut down slightly, painted a contrasting colour…et voila, the perfect forever dining table
Practical game-changing essentials
Everything pieces don't have to be decorative. Some are purely practical.
Reformer Pilates has genuinely changed my life, helping me find my way back to myself. Having a gym with a reformer is probably my greatest luxury.
I absolutely worship that machine. I talk to her as we work out together. Before and after every session, I clean and check her over. I know it's a bit weird, but she was an investment, she's beautifully engineered and she deserves to be looked after.
This slightly obsessive care doesn't end there. I'm incredibly particular about the features in our home.
They're not living things, but they're still precious to me. Caring for them properly shows respect – both for my surroundings and myself – whilst also helping them last longer.
There is a balance. Things are also meant to be used. Just light the Le Labo candle, Francesca. It's been four years already.
My Everything guidelines
Through these pieces, a pattern of my values emerges and tells the story of my design.
A constant, curious and open-minded quest for knowledge, discovery and new ways of doing things.
I'm deeply conscious of sustainability and waste, which is why we've found a use for every centimetre of the offcut marble from our kitchen.
Individuality and the unusual also matter. I love creating unexpected and intriguing conversations between objects that shouldn’t work together, yet somehow do.
Front of mind connection, respect and love for the people in my life, where I live and the experiences that have shaped me.
Then perhaps the biggest lightbulb moment of all... My Everything feeling is fundamentally about things that make me notice, think and feel.
Given my recent diagnosis of combined ADHD, it makes perfect sense. My hyper-active brain is constantly seeking stimulation, ideas and newness. Learning this has been one of the most positive and empowering moments of my life.
My mind needs feeding, but also space to rest. My Everything pieces give me both, stimulating my curiosity whilst simultaneously grounding me. I now truly understand why they're so important to me.
"The Everything Test"
So what does all this mean for you?
It boils down to one question: How do your values, beliefs and personality come to life through your style?
Enter stage left, “The Everything Test”. A simple, yet effective method I’ve coined and hope you’ll enjoy.
Start by walking slowly around your home and noticing things properly. Select the special pieces that instinctively draw you. Spend time using all your senses to describe them and why they matter.
Ask yourself:
What does it make me feel?
Why do I own this?
What story does it tell?
Would I choose it again?
What does it reveal about me?
Don’t think too much about the objects themselves. Pay attention to the answers.
Patterns, similarities and differences will become clear around them. Stories and memories. Colours. Shapes. Materials. Texture and smell. Where they came from and why you cherish them.
Those patterns become your personal design language – a flexible framework to more confidently make better decisions that are true to you, now and for years to come.
Designing intentionally
Creating a lasting and unique interior style isn't something we simply choose. The instinct behind what we love is ultimately deeply value-led.
We uncover it by paying closer attention to what matters to us, understanding why and allowing this knowledge to shape our homes.
Paradoxically, understanding your design language and principles behind what you love doesn’t restrict you. It frees you to experiment more confidently, safe in the knowledge you’re likely to create a cohesive and personal home that stands the test of time.
"Do I like this?" is replaced by a simpler and easier question to answer; "Does this belong in my story?"
This idea reaches further than interiors. It is a choice to live intentionally and curiously. To be present and actively connect with experiences, rather than passively observing.
Never forget the best things in life are wonderfully, tangibly real.
The smoothly worn surface of a wooden table beneath your fingertips. The changing tones of a linen bedsheet in the afternoon light. The smell of a wood fire on a rainy day. The weight of your favourite mug. The reassuring softness of the chair you've loved for fifteen years. The marble whose story began millions of years before yours.
They already surround you. Just pause and and notice them properly.
