How to dress your space to bring delight
Three designers – L’Objet’s ELAD YIFRACH, Completedworks founder ANNA JEWSBURY and ROXANNE ASSOULIN – share their expert advice on how you can use interior design to add more joy to your home, from incorporating eye-catching, unexpected elements to curating your surroundings on a regular basis. As told to KATIE BERRINGTON
Make it about the space – and yourself
“Creating an interior is such an emotional process,” says Anna Jewsbury, founder and artistic director of Completedworks. “Interior decorating is a form of self-expression, and I think people’s personal spaces can reveal a lot about them. Maybe not so much the individual pieces as the way they bring it all together. Our space has lots of original Georgian features, so we’re trying to keep the interiors quite understated, focusing on interesting materials and textures, without letting anything be too overpowering. I think, with such a beautiful frame, you don’t want the decor to be too invasive.”
Get playful with placement
“Flourishes of artworks and ceramics can really transform a room. Deliberately playing with placement can also add an element of surprise, which always makes a space a bit more thoughtful and special,” adds Jewsbury. “I think the vases in the Completedworks collection, for instance, present an opportunity to see if you can be deceptively simple with your space. Some of the pieces are purposefully designed to have a small neck, angled unconventionally, so that, if you choose to put flowers in the vase, the stems will sit at sharper angles. The effect is to create something that feels both precise and drawn from the natural world, yet utterly unconventional.”
Embrace the unexpected
“Anything that throws the symmetry off is a pleasant touch,” says L’Objet founder and creative director Elad Yifrach. “Textures and unexpected colors provide a nice punctuation.”
This can include reassigning particularly loved items so that they have an alternative purpose. “For instance,” says Yifrach, “artful objects that carry some sort of function – bowls, candles, a sculpture – can become bookends. One of my favorite sculptures is a bronze Rodin that I bought in Antwerp. I now use it as a bookend – and I love it even more.”
Jewsbury is also a champion of the eye-catching power of the unconventional: “For me, it’s all about adding personal, unexpected, even illogical details to a room – details that make the eyes dance around.”
Frequently curate your surroundings
Yifrach applies his professional, editorial eye to his home. “I try to surround myself with objects in a similar curated way. Sometimes I feel like having more, other times I feel like less. So I often put things in the closet if I want things to be more serene, and then add more layers when more feels right.”
Roxanne Assoulin takes the same method of dressing a space as she does with her own wardrobe. “I love a simple, quiet room with a bit of surprise. I like to dress a room the way I dress myself: minimalistic, classic but a bit ‘off’’, using hits of color from a blanket, a vase, a painting… Things I can change around,” she says. This is a more daring approach to curating a room.
“I’m too chicken to live in a colored room – my eye tires pretty easily,” laughs Assoulin, “but I am craving a pink couch. So who knows?!”
Remember that small touches make a big difference
“It’s always the little things for me,” says Assoulin. “I love organized color, lots of repetition, spools of multicolored threads and ribbons, beads and markers. At home, it’s my sweaters – all neatly stacked and color coordinated. And bud vases filled with bright flowers. Then, of course, there are plants… I love anything green – and especially if it’s alive.”
Finally, don’t be afraid to add a little humor
When it comes to accessorizing to bring joy into a space, “in general, make sure there is humor in there,” concludes Yifrach. “If it makes you smile, then it adds intelligence to the room and makes it feel full of life.”
The people featured in this story are not associated with NET-A-PORTER and do not endorse it or the products show