How I find interiors inspiration in my wardrobe, on holiday and even in my local park

Home decorator and content creator Grace H is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on colourful home design, mixing vintage pieces with new and making personality-filled spaces. See the rest of her articles here.

So, you’ve decided to decorate and, naturally, the first place you turn is social media. You start scrolling, saving and pinning images for inspiration. I do this myself regularly, and it can be a brilliant source of ideas. But are we missing a trick?

It’s all too easy to keep scrolling without really taking in the details. We save image after image, but how often do we stop to think about why something caught our eye in the first place?

There are so many other places to find inspiration, away from our iPhones and Pinterest boards. Sometimes, the best ideas come when we’re not actively looking for them at all.

Unplugged observation

We’ve just returned from Greece, and my camera roll is filled with beautiful colours found in the most unexpected places. A raspberry-coloured streetlight, a weathered old fishing boat, the saturated colours of fresh produce at the local market, old buildings painted in rust and white, and railings in that unmistakable shade of Greek blue.

Tiles, native plants and painted shutters all feed the imagination, encouraging creativity and a little out of the box thinking.

Where could I use these colours? Why do they command my attention? What exactly has captured my imagination? Is it the colour itself, the way it sits alongside another shade, the texture, or perhaps the feeling it evokes?

It also helped that I switched my phone off for the week. I felt more present and able to soak up the details around me, rather than moving through the day feeling visually overstimulated. I noticed so much more when I wasn't constantly looking at a screen.

Wearable inspiration

I’ve touched on this before, but the clothes I choose to wear often have just as much influence on my home as the interiors I save online. Red stripes, contrasting colours, lived-in pieces sitting alongside newer additions…there’s usually a reason we’re drawn to certain combinations. So why not consider bringing them into our homes, too?

You already know you like these colours, patterns and textures because you choose to wear them.

I save so many images of outfits on my phone (often spotted on people going about their everyday lives), but it's not necessarily the outfit itself that interests me. It might be an unexpected colour combination, the introduction of an interesting textile, or a particular accessory that makes the whole look work.

Rather than copying the outfit, I can take those little details and translate them into a room scheme. Perhaps it's a combination of colours I wouldn't normally put together, a clash of patterns, or the way different textures sit alongside one another. Inspiration doesn't have to come from interiors to work beautifully in them.

Lessons from the landscape

If a colour combination can be found in nature, it's a pretty good place to start when putting together a scheme. As the seasons change, so does the palette around us, and budding plants, flowers and changing foliage can be a wonderful starting point for a room.

On a recent stroll through my local park to get my daily caffeine fix, I stopped for a while and really took in the details. A wrought-iron bench with wooden slats sat alongside autumnal leaves. Vibrant red geraniums popped against foliage that was just beginning to turn, while above me, a clear, crisp blue sky was scattered with clouds in the softest off-white.

It sounds simple, but there was so much inspiration in those little combinations. The contrast between the painted metal and natural wood, the vibrancy of the flowers against the changing leaves, and the softness of the clouds against that clear blue sky.

You don't need to go looking for a perfectly put together colour palette. Sometimes, you just need to stop, look around and notice what's already there.

The power of print

You can't beat riffling through your favourite interiors magazine with a cuppa in hand and time to kill. There's something about the way you absorb information from a physical publication that feels different to scrolling on a screen.

The colours feel more considered, and you start to notice the details: cupboard handles, wood grain, texture, patina. They seem to jump out at you. More importantly, there's space for your eyes to rest. You're not constantly moving on to the next image, searching for the next thing to save.

I still order some of my favourite interiors magazines and love the satisfying thud of them landing on the doormat. I put them to one side until I know I have time to put my laptop away and properly enjoy them. It's become a little bit of me time, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's nothing quite like flicking through the pages and suddenly landing on an image that makes you think, this is so me. I still tear pages out of magazines and pop them into a folder alongside fabric samples, ready to refer back to when I'm working on a scheme.

There's something about having something tangible in your hands that sparks creativity in a different way. You can revisit it, compare it with other ideas and see how it makes you feel, without the distraction of another notification or an endless scroll.

So, how do you take all this inspiration and turn it into a room scheme?

Mostly, by playing.

Get your paint charts out and hold together the colour combinations that have caught your eye. Introduce fabrics and textiles inspired by nature and see how they sit alongside your paint samples. Borrow cupboard handles to test out different finishes. Try artwork, hold up ceramics and slowly begin to layer things together.

There is no right or wrong answer. Just play.

I always order fabric samples when I find something I like online. More often than not, they look or feel different from how I imagined when they arrive (for better or worse!). But that's part of the fun. A fabric can spark an entirely new idea once you can see its true colour, feel its texture and hold it alongside other materials. It's something a flat image on a computer screen simply can't replicate.

When I'm feeling uninspired or overwhelmed, you can often find me rummaging through my fabric drawer. It's the physical things I keep coming back to, rather than scrolling through Pinterest in the hope that something will suddenly click.

From there, I can start to build a scheme, introducing layers and asking myself questions as I go.

Is this finally the moment to use that raspberry shade I spotted on the streetlight in Greece? What about adding a glossy finish to contrast with the softer textures, like the painted metal on the park bench? Ooh, I have a dress with these colours in it… what other shades does it bring together? Could I introduce those into the mix, too?

These are the kinds of questions I find myself asking when I'm putting a scheme together, and not one of them requires social media.

Don't get me wrong, I still love a good scroll and there's absolutely a place for it. But sometimes, we can become so caught up in collecting inspiration that we forget to actually experience it.

The next time you're thinking about decorating, try putting your phone down for a while. Look at what you're wearing, take the longer route through the park, flick through a magazine or simply notice the colours and textures around you.

You might be surprised by what catches your eye when you're not looking at a screen.

And who knows? Your next favourite colour combination might not come from Pinterest at all. It might come from a raspberry-coloured streetlight in Greece.