Five of the best interiors blogs
By Hannah Booth and Anne-Celine Jaeger
The Guardian, 27 February 2010
Love nosing around people's homes? Looking for some design ideas? Then log on to the hottest interiors blogs
The Selby
Todd Selby
Photographer Todd Selby was shooting the likes of Dolly Parton and Tom Wolfe at home for magazines like Vogue when the idea for a blog emerged. "I loved seeing how these creative people lived. I wanted to tell a story about who they are through their things," he says. So he began photographing the homes of friends. Turns out he's rather well connected – these include Michael Stipe, Helena Christensen and Peaches Geldof, alongside lesser known creative types. "I hope the blog encourages you to be yourself," he says. (The Selby Is In Your Place is published in April by Abrams, at £22.50.)
Emma's Blog
Per Magnus Persson/Emma Fexeus
Swede Emma Fexeus blogs about Scandinavian design in all its pared-down glory. She features elegant photography of mouthwatering houses, as well as hot-off-the-press postings on the latest furniture and accessories. Fexeus, a self-confessed country girl, has a particular penchant for "vintage, inherited or flea market furniture".
Design Squish
Anastasia Ugorskaya
Sustainable ideas – from apple crate shelves to sofas made from shipping pallets – grace the pages of this blog. "People are rediscovering frugal living, and we wanted to inspire them," says designer Paul Gower, who started the blog two years ago with Anastasia Ugorskaya, a painter. Squish also features glorious nature photography – just for the fun of it.
Design Sponge
Grace Bonney
"Most of our readers are under 35, like me, and not earning huge salaries," says Grace Bonney, Design Sponge founder. "And we haven't traditionally been catered for." The blog has weekly DIY projects, trends and room makeovers with before and after shots, each one followed by readers' breathless comments: "OMG that kitchen is AMAZING!!!"
Apartment Therapy
Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan
Ordinary readers showing off their extraordinary homes is Apartment Therapy's big draw – and it's hard not to become addicted. The blog also features the sort of useful advice – how to fill narrow spaces, how to hang frames, how to shop for vintage – you'd expect from its founder, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, a former interior designer. "In these post-recession times, there is a strong desire for homes that feel authentic and personal," he says.
Other homes blogs we love...
Cold House Journal
Diary of a couple in Maine, USA, living without heating.
Home Shopping Spy
High street finds and hidden gems selected by Brit Ellie Tennant.
Katy Elliott
An account of Elliott's renovation of her New England home.
Print and Pattern
British blog dedicated to all things patterned.
Tea For Joy
Vintage design ideas from a London-based tea obsessive.
New Online Magazine "Glo" Launches
Janel Laban
Apartment Therapy, 6 April 2010
MSN has just launched a new womens lifestyle destination site called Glo. It is a partnership between MSN, Berman Braun and Hachette Filipacchi Media (publisher of Elle Decor). According to cnet, even though it was concevied before the tablet was announced it "will likely be one of the online media sites that shine best on the new Apple iPad." We took a look and saw some content from point.click.home as part of the mix, so the style of Elle Decor most likely will inform the decor part of Glo's editorial.
Now go to. Get a Glo on.
The Homies 2009
Remodelista
Young House Love
Decor8
Retro Renovation
Door Sixteen
Making It Lovely
Domino's Favorites
apartment therapy: The multi-city grandaddy of accessible decor.
sfgirlbybay: California flea-market "hippie chic".
decor8: Crafty creativity, frequently updated.
cool hunting: New products and gadgets with avant-garde luxe.
moco loco: "Modern and Contemporary" objects and architecture.
the style files: Global chic from a stylist in the Netherlands.
peak of chic: High end, decorator obsessed and Southern-inflected.
habitually chic: The favorite rooms of a young NYC decorator.
holister hovey: Quirky finds from a historically minded Anglophile.
design*sponge: Happy Modernism.
Remodelista: Cutting-Edge Cool.
Style Court: Traditional Glam.
Graphic Design Degrees' Top 100
Like any other form of art and self-expression, interior decorating requires an intimate knowledge of color, line, shape, texture, perspective, and the other elements of design. Amateurs and professionals alike familiar with what constitutes a working, aesthetic room within certain budget, space, and stylistic guidelines have thousands – if not millions – of options open to them when it comes to finding something unique and personal. But creativity does not exist in a vacuum, and those in need of advice and ideas can simply head to the internet to discover exactly what they want. The following blogs offer up plenty for those who feel as if they hit a roadblock in their decorating, need some ideas to get started, or simply want a bit of a push when it comes to finding a product. Far more interior design blogs exist beyond this, of course, with each one offering something different to its reader base. Please use these listed here as excellent resources, but understand that the value of the unlisted others as well.