22 Comments
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Emmie's avatar

I love color and warmth. Sterile white and beige spaces have never been for me.

Dallas▫️'s avatar

I loved this! I actually have a post started for a few weeks' time about how I am an interior designer who can't stand modern design precisely for what you say, it has no soul. Remove all the furnishings and it has no heartbeat. Love your perspective here! Here's to resisting the beige!! 🤍

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

Can't wait to read your taken on it!

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

So many cafes in particular try to be so modern and sterile its like you're in some awful IKEA show room!

Dallas▫️'s avatar

Yes! My hairdressing salon recently moved and used IKEA for some of their new furnishings... I tried to be very polite 😅😂🤦🏻‍♀️

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

🤣🤣🤣 omg i would've loved to have heard that convo! Lol

Marge Farrington's avatar

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. Flower Power, bright colors. I couldn't have beads on my door frame to my bedroom, so I took colorful straws, cut them into pieces, used colorful yarn to hang them.

In the indoor images I make are colorful. I love color. When you look back at cars, there were so many colors.

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

Oh I love the colorful plastic straws and yarn doorway divider!! So creative! And yes cars were more colourful back then!

Priya | The Pretend Poet's avatar

I can’t really stand all the beige. Beige, to me, is the background where splashes of colour and texture are meant to be layered on. Like a base coat.

Writer's Corner's avatar

Gods, spare us that "Aesthetic" Grave, I would die of boredom in it, aptly close to the Grave. You should see my home, a double wide mobile house from 1973, with walls of real brown oak panels that everyone else in my surrounding have covered with white paint or whatever. It's warm and cozy, a bit cluttered but LIVED in. There is space for both pain and laughter. Thank you, Caitlin, for this full-of-good-points reflection. With love, Maria

Davina - Belonging to Myself's avatar

I love this. I have colour in my home. I love colour. But not all colours at once! When I was a child 'my' colour was yellow. So I was given a yellow towel, a yellow toothbrush, yellow cup - that kind of thing - where my sister was red and my brother was blue. I kind of reacted against that and now I have my mother's yellow buddha statue, a saffron yellow bedstead, saffron throw on my sea blue sofa - a rug that has blues and saffron - a wall of strident yellow beside the stairs. Not sure where I am going with this. Maybe the power of colour.

P.S. I can't really go with the IKEA breakfast as a concept. I have to have meatballs with all the trimmings!

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

Thanks Davina! I love the one colour idea!! And I also love Ikeas meatballs 😄

Davina - Belonging to Myself's avatar

Hurrah for meatballs! I certainly reacted against the one colour as a teenager - I wanted my bedroom purple. And I got it. 🤔

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

purple is my fave colour! I would’ve loved a purple bedroom!

Curtis Rivers's avatar

Love this Caitlin, as I’ve never quite trusted rooms that look too perfect.

Give me the odd cup, the pebble from a beach walk, my ever growing pile of books, and the little objects that only make sense when you know the story behind them.

That’s where the soul lives to me.

I understand the appeal of clean lines and calm spaces, but when everything is 'too' curated, it can start to feel like nobody actually lives there. 😃

I think a home should breathe, and hold memories, not just match a colour palette.

And yes, I say this as someone who's a bit OCD and still enjoys a wander around IKEA now and again. 😉

⭐🙏⭐

Caitlin McColl 🇨🇦's avatar

Glqd to hear it Curtis!

Ink and Light by Nat Hale's avatar

Memories made visible.

I don't really see clutter. I see stories.

The Christmas tree ornaments we've collected over the years. Holiday souvenirs that make you smile every time you notice them. A pebble picked up on a beach. The mug everyone else ignores but you always reach for.

Our homes slowly become filled with the evidence that we've lived there. They hold our history. The happy times and the heartbreaking ones. The ordinary days that somehow become the memories we treasure most.

I think gardens are much the same. The best ones are never perfectly planned. They're full of self-seeded flowers that decided where they wanted to grow, cuttings pushed into the ground on a whim, and plants passed from one friend to another simply because there was love enough to share.

Maybe that's what gives both homes and gardens their soul. They aren't beautiful because they're perfect. They're beautiful because they've grown, little by little, alongside the people who love them.