I have a bit of a pet peeve when it comes to interiors: rooms that are so perfectly styled, they make you afraid to sit down.
You know the ones.
Every cushion is karate-chopped into submission. The throw is draped at exactly the right angle. The coffee-table books are carefully stacked, the decorative object is precisely off-centre, and everything looks beautiful — right up until someone actually decides to use the room.
Then you sit on the sofa.
You pull the throw over your legs. You move a cushion behind your back because, as lovely as it looked standing upright in the corner, it is actually much more useful there. You put your coffee on the table. Maybe the dog jumps up beside you.
And suddenly the room feels... disturbed.
Worse yet, when you get up, you feel compelled to spend the next ten minutes putting everything back exactly where it was.
That, to me, is when a room has started asking too much of the people who live in it.
Your Home Is Not a Photograph
There is an enormous difference between a room that photographs beautifully and a room that feels wonderful to be in.
Of course, I want both.
I love a beautifully considered interior. I love layers, interesting objects, beautiful furniture, art, colour, texture and all of the little details that give a room its character.
But I never want the pursuit of a beautiful room to make the people living in it uncomfortable.
A home is not a set.
It is not meant to remain frozen in the exact composition someone created at nine o'clock in the morning.
Rooms change throughout the day because life changes throughout the day. A book gets left open. A chair is pulled closer to the fire. The sunlight moves across the floor. A cup appears on the coffee table. Someone kicks off their shoes.
These things aren't ruining the room.
They're evidence that the room is doing its job.
Comfortable Does Not Mean Messy
There is an important distinction here.
A room designed for comfortable living does not have to be untidy, chaotic or careless.
I still believe in putting things away. I still love a beautifully made bed, a thoughtfully arranged table and a room that feels calm and considered.
The difference is that the room should be able to withstand being used.
There should be room for a book to be left on a table for an afternoon without the entire space suddenly feeling dishevelled. A throw should be allowed to move. A cushion should be allowed to soften. A chair should be able to shift slightly because someone actually sat in it.
Comfortable living is not about abandoning order.
It is about creating a kind of relaxed order — one that leaves a little breathing room for real life.
And It Is Not a Decorating Style
This idea is not exclusive to rustic rooms, casual rooms or spaces filled with worn leather and rumpled linen.
A contemporary interior can be wonderfully livable.
So can a traditional one.
Modern, rustic, eclectic, classic, minimal, maximal, country, urban — none of these styles owns the idea of comfort.
You can have a beautifully tailored, highly sophisticated room that still invites you to put your feet up.
You can have a clean, modern space that feels warm rather than precious.
You can have a formal room that still feels welcoming.
Livability is not about what the room looks like.
It is about how the room behaves once people enter it.
That, to me, is a far more interesting measure of good design.
A Room Should Serve You
Somewhere along the way, I think we became a little confused about who is supposed to be serving whom.
We should not be serving our rooms.
Our rooms should be serving us.
A sofa should invite you to curl up in it. A coffee table should have somewhere to put a coffee. A beautiful chair should still be a chair you actually want to sit in.
And a cushion should be allowed to get squashed.
There is nothing wrong with caring about how your home looks. I certainly do. But there is a point where styling crosses over into maintenance — where the room requires constant adjusting, straightening and resetting just to retain its appeal.
That is not my idea of luxury.
To me, luxury is being able to walk into a beautiful room, sit down, put your feet up and completely forget about the room itself.
Beautiful Doesn't Have to Mean Precious
Perhaps the answer is designing spaces with a little more forgiveness built into them.
Natural materials help.
Wood gets richer with age. Leather softens. Linen wrinkles. Stone develops a patina. Handmade pieces aren't perfectly identical to begin with.
There is already an acceptance of change and imperfection within those materials.
But even in a more polished or contemporary interior, there can still be that same sense of ease.
It comes down to choosing things that can be used, not simply admired.
Layering helps too. When a room has texture, pattern, books, art and objects with character, one slightly crooked cushion doesn't suddenly throw the entire composition into chaos.
In fact, sometimes the slightly undone version of a room is more interesting.
I like interiors that feel collected rather than arranged. Comfortable rather than precious. Considered without looking as though someone has just finished styling them for a photograph.
There should be enough looseness in a room that life can enter without destroying the effect.
The Best Rooms Can Take a Little Life
Not mess in the piles-of-laundry-and-three-days-of-dishes sense.
I'm talking about the lovely little disruptions of daily life.
A newspaper folded over the arm of a chair.
A stack of books that someone is actually reading.
A blanket that has clearly been used.
Flowers beginning to fall slightly out of formation.
A chair turned toward another chair because two people were having a conversation.
These things give a room movement.
They give it humanity.
And often, they are what separates a beautiful interior from a memorable one.
Designed for Living
I still want the room to look beautiful when I walk into it.
I just don't want to feel as though I've ruined it by living there.
The best rooms, in my mind, have a kind of quiet resilience. They can absorb us. They can handle an afternoon nap, an unexpected guest, a glass of wine, a dog, a book, a conversation that goes on longer than expected.
And when everyone gets up and leaves, the room may not look exactly as it did before.
That is perfectly fine.
A home should hold your life — not require you to tiptoe around it.
Because ultimately, I don't want to live in a room that is always ready for its photograph.
I want to live in one that is ready for me.
We don’t just make furniture—we make pieces that move you.