Monday, October 31, 2011

The 20 Best Interiors Blogs

by Gareth Wyn Davies, The Telegraph

Abigail Ahern
Ahern’s white-text-on-black-background blog looks as dramatic as the zeitgeisty interiors that she creates. Like them it is also intimate, with chatty tips (illustrated with lots of arresting pictures) on everything from hanging art to 'zoning’ space, as well as trends and tricks of the trade. abigailahern.wordpress.com

Apartment Therapy
No top 20 would be complete without that behemoth of blogs/forums, Apartment Therapy. Despite its size and reach - and it really is huge, with dizzyingly frequent updates, and posts from around the world - it retains a sense of community. It’s primarily pictorial, with the main feature being House Tours of hipsters’ homes, though it mixes these with practical tips. apartmenttherapy.com

The Beat that My Heart Skipped
'A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations’ reads the sub head. Which roughly translates as 'nirvana for rubberneckers’. The aesthetic is pretty catholic: one day it might be an austerely simple Georgian country house, the next something mid-century modern in the south London suburbs. thebeatthatmy heartskipped.co.uk

Ben Pentreath
It’s not just Ben Pentreath’s interiors shop in Bloomsbury, London, that we’ve fallen in love with; we’re huge fans of his charming blog and even more charming parsonage in Dorset, too. Gratifyingly for nosy types, the parsonage and its enchanting cottage-style garden often crop up in said blog. He’s a cultured so-and-so, is Pentreath, and even his most chatty posts have an erudite but self-deprecating edge. benpentreath.com/inspiration

Bodie and Fou
Karine Candice is a French expat living in London who shares her inspirations, life and all-round creative ingenuity with the world via this blog. Go to the My Home section and sigh at the beauty of her residences (note the plural there). Then click on other links to check out the wonders she’s worked in different rooms - the naff old kitchen cupboards that she has transformed with black paint and a stainless-steel worktop, the charcoal-grey daughter’s nursery, the old pallet turned into a chic (no, really) coffee table. bodieandfou.blogspot.com

Decor8
Decor8 is the name on virtually every other interiors blogger’s blogroll, and with good reason. In six years it’s become such a popular design resource that its American founder, Holly Becker, now has a bestselling spin-off book to her name and is a regular on the lecture circuit. decor8blog.com

Emma’s Designblogg
This Stockholm-based blogger is nothing if not prolific. You could lose yourself for hours in all her archived pages. There aren’t too many words (and those that there are, are English rather than Swedish), just photograph after photograph of beautiful interiors best described as Scandi-rustic. A must for anyone seeking design inspiration or simply to get out of chores. emmas.blogg.se

Famille Summerbelle
If you didn’t know that Julie, the Frenchwoman who blogs (in English) under the name Famille Summerbelle, was a designer of prints, textiles and interiors accessories, you’d guess pretty sharpish. The way that photographs are artfully grouped according to their subjects’ form, pattern or colour is a bit of a giveaway. Fans of the artist Rob Ryan would do well to follow the link on the blog to a shop selling her work. famillesummerbelle.typepad.com

Habitually Chic
'Glamorous Lives & Stylish Places’ is the tagline to this utterly compelling blog from a New York interior designer, a woman of unashamedly uptown taste, both modern, slightly Mad Men uptown and the more traditional. She’ll post photos of everything from the late Jackie O’s swag-tastic Fifth Avenue apartment to her own well-stocked dressing-room. Yes, it’s that fabulous. habituallychic.blogspot.com

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Photo: emmas designblogg