Holiday-inspired interiors

Fallen in love with the rustic charm of your holiday destination? Keep the romance alive once you get home with travel-inspired décor

Falling in love on holiday is easy. Who wouldn’t want to capture the magic of summer travel – the sound of cicadas on a sun-baked terrace, say, or the scent of bougainvillea – cram it into a suitcase and sit down on the lid? If only it were that simple. Too often, our attempts to bring home the unique charm of our holiday destination result in a bottle of alarmingly coloured liquor festering at the back of a kitchen cupboard, or an orphaned painted plate, wrapped in a sarong, buried at the bottom of a suitcase. The key to bringing back the looks from our travels is to think about the structure and style of the places you love, rather than the trinkets. So from Provence, you might find inspiration in the uneven, chipped walls and floors that give its homes such a painterly feel. From New England, the white and blue scheme, fresh as toothpaste. Or from Morocco, the rich textiles, electric with colour. Here’s where to begin.

French vintage

To capture the faded elegance of the vintage French home, you need to begin with a dusty colour palette of greys and olives, with lots of mismatched gnarly wooden antiques. The mood should be of austerity, lightened with some painterly, feminine touches. No high-gloss modernity, if you please.

In this beautiful French kitchen, the wood panelling on the walls is slathered in chalky paint (Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White is a good match). Panelling is not only cheap, it’s also a great way of covering dodgy plaster work.

For antiques, you don’t need to schlep to the markets of Lille. Whitstable Interiors (whitstableinteriors.co.uk) has lovely farmhouse tables with painted legs, or check out Quirky Interiors (quirkyinteriors.co.uk) for furniture with a worn finish.

Here, there is nothing matchy matchy about the beaten-up enamelware on the shelf, the oversized bench or the heirloom dining table. In essence, you’re looking for faded colours, blocky antiques, and low-key decorative touches. Magnifique!

Moroccan colour

A word of warning about bringing the style of a Moroccan souk to your back garden. What looked fabulous under the egg-yolk sun of north Africa can be drained of all its charm under the lead-grey skies of Britain in the drizzle. So think carefully before you paint that fence fuchsia pink.

The most effective way of bringing the electric colours of Morocco back to your yard is in summer accessories, which only appear when it’s bright. Come June, July and August, those zingy orange patio tables, shocking-pink bean bags and turquoise filigree lanterns will make of your little courtyard a kasbah. And come autumn, you can pack them all away again.

If you’re going hell for leather on the outdoor accessories this summer, then keep the rest of the scene low key (note the wrought-iron bench here, which is playing host to a riot of textiles). The only foil you’ll need is the vegetation – easy.

Pure New England

Ah, New England style: all white paint and sun-bleached colours. Let nothing but Dulux Pure Brilliant White grace those walls (or better still, your tongue-and-groove panelling). Let nothing but pale sofas and chairs deck your lounge. If you must get cutesy with the textiles, then stick to the patriotic colours of the star-spangled banner (with possibly the odd nautical stripe).

This look is beach house meets East Coast arts and crafts (quilting is big in New England). If you go off course or forget your lines, just go back to white and you’re home and dry.

You’re allowed a small amount of natural wood (here, on the blanket box, flooring and the picture frame), and some natural texture. Try a white rattan Lloyd Loom chair (lloydloom.com), softened with some natural ticking from the king of stripes, fabric designer Ian Mankin (ianmankin.co.uk).

Back