The limits to minimalism

 As a 'dyed in the wool' minimalist, it came as quite a shock to me to have to confront the realisation that I may have outgrown my very controlled home environment! Over the past year, I have had the good fortune to house-sit for my daughter on a couple of occasions, and each time I have had quite a re-adjustment when returning to my one-bedroom flat. Yesterday evening, I spent some time thinking about this, trying to pin down what I have enjoyed at my daughter's house and how her place differs from my own. After much thought, I hit on the idea that colour could be the answer.

The first excursion into challenging my monochromatic colour scheme began back in early 2024 when I embarked on a gallery wall in my living room. Until then, my entire flat was dominated by greys and shades of brown through beige.

My monochromatic colour scheme

By contrast, my daughter's house is full of colour, especially greens, with a strong botanical theme throughout that complements the natural wood floors, windows, doors and staircase. This is elevated with the use of blending colours, such as a blue carpet in her music room and shades of "jacaranda purple" that is a recurrent theme. These colours all echo the spectacular view from her house, dominated by green most of the year, but transformed into purple when the jacarandas are in bloom.

A striking accent wall is complemented by the botanical theme and the natural wood

To come home to the monochrome of my flat always gave me a sense of calm when I was still working, a visual relief from the outside world. Now that I am retired, and these spaces are the background to many more hours of my day, it seems like I need to heighten the visual stimulation.

All the rooms in my flat continue the same colour theme of grey on white with browns and beige

I moved into my flat in 2016, and completely refurbished and repainted it at the time (with loads of help from my daughter, both physical and in terms of advice). The idea was to use the theme of the exterior of the Art Deco building, which has retained its original colour scheme of grey accents on white, as the starting point. All of the built-in timber - walls, skirtings, picture rails and built-in cupboards followed the soft grey of the exterior, against plain white walls. The natural wood floors were retained, but the grano floors in the kitchen and bathroom we painted in a darker grey epoxy paint as a nod to their concrete origins.

Many of my pieces of furniture are also natural wood, which was the inspiration for most of the decor, collected over the years from markets and gifted to me by friends and relatives who have bought into the design theme. This has served me very well for nearly a decade, but it seems now is time for a bit of a change.

The difficult design question is what to do, that is cost effective and does not look patched in, yet retains some of the character that I have built up over the years. Some of the ideas that I pondered were to re-upholster some of the occasional chairs, although this is often more costly that simply buying new ones and passing the old ones on. Throws and scatter cushions, while simple, affordable and easy to reverse if they don't look good, tend to look "patched in" and tentative. Another idea that I am seriously considering is to introduce a bold colour as an accent wall, maybe starting with one room and then possibly extending this into some of the other spaces. The choice of colour will be a real challenge - my thoughts are tending towards a terra cotta, as something not too radically different from my existing decor.

In the next few weeks, I will be experimenting with digital mock-ups, as a way of understanding the effects of different hues and shades, before I commit to a decision. Somehow, I have always been comfortable making colour choices for clients, but have tended to be much more conservative with my own spaces, so this is going to be quite an adventure!