In spring 2012′s colour scheme, faded pastels, beiges & greys are the main ingredients. Dark graphite grey provide the contrast. Add wood (preferably blonde) and glass or transparents. So says the trend oracles. Typically springish & nice! Above pic is a shoot of our dining area; pics below via sköna hem & skeppsholmen.

Love this composition! This is actually the same home as in this post (taken nearly 4 yrs ago; it’s quite cool to compare two gorgeous versions of the same room, and see how tastes & trends evolve).

Faded & beautiful. Top-trendy for spring 2012 and a slightly granny-esque or Faded Glamour vibe.

Lastly, I think the grey wall in this kitchen below is awesome.

…is certainly a favourite topic of mine. I can’t get enough of nicely decorated bathrooms, because in Sweden, we are uncontrollably late in that regard. It seems to take forever to leave – or at least ease up – the sterile totally-tiled ideal. I’ve collected some dreadful Swedish examples in this post (along with some inspirational, of course). And here’s another round of homey and nice – decorated! – bathrooms.

| via little blue deer |

Bathroom + WIC is such a nice combo! Something in the corner, with the shoes & boots, makes it look a bit like a hallway, but apart from that I think it’s gorgeous. Great example of the motto A bathroom is a room too..

| via country living |

Interesting! Gives me think of both an orphanage from the 30s and Russian nouveau riche. Though contemporary.

| via two ellie |

Just a little bit of decor. But enough to make it homey & cozy! And below, an Asian vibe. Clean and strict, yet very inviting. Lovely black floor…

| via sköna hem |

This one is my current favourite. Due to the slight uncomfortableness of our beautiful rococo sofa, we are now considering an alternative. Our redpink rococo darling will in any event be stored and kept for later, but for now two working ants need something comfy to relax in after a weeks hard work. My dear hubby wants a perfectly worn Chesterfield sofa, me fancy something like this. More fluffy than Børge Mogensen’s sofa, but still leather, still caramely, still retro. The roaring 20s and Gatsby era is such an intriguing inspiration.

| from the hugo collection at graham & green |

Here’s two loungey living areas I really appreciate. First one, for its composition of textiles, the petit and retro tables, and especially for the double/overlapping rugs. I find the last-mentioned feature very trendey-ish and inspiring.

This next one suffers from the lack of quirkiness, but the combination of seating furniture is splendid in my view. I also like the slightly beige/powdry walls – they make the whole room much more beautiful and nice than white walls would have done. The same but differently coloured lamps are also a great feature, they bind the two parts of the room together in a nice way. Shame they don’t have more books in the shelves, i would love them to be packed like a library and maybe some nice art, mirrors etc sporadicly hung over it. Oh and the curtains are not there yet.

And hey, imagine that black lamp was a huge, over-sized, Jeeves & Woostery hat lamp, hung lower…With heavy curtains – maybe red or dark green velvet ones – flowing from the left and a library to the right. Then I would only miss the drinks trolley.

| pics via because i’m addicted |

Today I came across Alcro‘s brand new paint collection and Graham & Green‘s Autumn 2011 Catalogue. The themes were so similar it must be honored a post: Greys & beiges! These are pics from Alcro’s ad.natur paint collection. It’s inspired by something that makes us humans feel good: nature. Claiming that neither whites nor bright colours can give the calmness and harmony of beiges and greys.

I tend to agree. Last winter we painted our Stockholm-White bedroom beige (F&B’s Matchstick) and I still love it. It enlivened the room and make the perfect backdrop. One thing to keep in mind speaking of nature colours though, is that nature is also the dark blue sea beyond the beach, the field of flowers next to the industrial building and the drab green and rusty brown trees and hues in the forest. Nature has been endowed with the most amazing colour splashes and schemes. So could the decor :)

Moving on to the G&G Catalouge, it again strikes me how well beiges and greys – or  grey plus sand/beige/blonde wood – go together. I think it’s a really cozy vibe going on here. And there’s room for even more flower meadows and lush plantations…

The house tour continues in the kitchen! When we moved in, the kitchen was tiny and very outdated, so to create a larger and more user-friendly kitchen we knocked down a wall to combine two small rooms and opened out the chimney breast to make room for the range cooker (which I love because it’s got so much oven space!). It was an excruciatingly dusty and noisy job and I’m really glad it’s over. But it was all worth it of course because now we have a spacious and modern kitchen which makes life just a bit easier and cooking a lot more fun!

View of fridge-freezer and pull-out larders. We don’t normally have that much wine, but I won auctions on three boxes full of wine so now I’m rather unexpectedly rich on wine, if not money.. :-)
Dining room. My favourites here are the vintage empire-style chandelier, the Chinese cabinet and the cute Polish “Cyrk” poster (my birthday gift). This room turned out a lot more traditional looking than we had initially envisaged – mostly because of the period features already in the room and the antique furniture finds we laid our hands on along the way. Decorating can be quite an exciting journey – you never quite know where you’ll end up and often mistakes, path-corrections and chance discoveries can make the end result a lot more interesting than what you had in mind from the start! :-)

Finally, check out the lift below. This is brilliant – I only wish it was a real lift which I could take up to the loft! Sadly it’s just a trompe l’oeil wallpaper from style-your-door… Highly recommend this for a boring piece of wall actually – it certainly brougt some fun and colour to the disused door under our stairs :-)

| all images: trendey |