We want our homes to reflect who we are and we’re increasingly turning away from buying massed produced items and going in search of more individual pieces. This, coupled with a surge in the popularity of all things vintage, means that upcycling continues to grow as an interiors trend, as it not only gives you a totally unique look but is also great for the environment and your home decorating budget.
If you like the idea, you’ll find plenty of inspiration on blogs and in magazines, then start looking in antique markets, auctions, salvage yards and car boot sales to find suitable furniture, home accessories and fabrics in reasonable condition and just let your imagination take over. Avoid anything with signs of woodworm, but almost anything in reasonable condition can be transformed. Why not treat yourself to a course on upholstery, staining or paint techniques at a local college if you need pieces for several rooms? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- An old stepladder rubbed down and stained or painted makes a great bookshelf or towel rail for a guest room.
- Cover a school desk, coffee or side table in vintage tiles or decoupage made from old magazines or comics (ideal for a child’s room) sealed with several coats of varnish. Use the same technique for kitchen trays, using pages from old recipe books. Or use blackboard paint to make an ideal play table for a nursery.
- Old wardrobes, with or without doors, make great storage. Add recycled timber shelves and drawers to make bespoke storage units for your kitchen, bathroom, utility room or hall. An old dresser works well too. If drawers are missing, fill the gaps with storage baskets.
- Line old drawers with paper to match or contrast with your walls, wall mount them and use as individual shelves. Alternatively, paint them, inside and out, to match your walls and use them to frame pictures, photos or mirrors. Or, by adding castors to them, you can create mobile storage units or magazine racks.
- Hang spoons or forks from a metal ring (an old bicycle wheel could work) as an eye catching ‘chandelier’ to hang above a dining table.
- If you’ve got reasonable DIY skills, you can take on more adventurous projects such as removing the top of a cabinet and installing a basin to make a vanity unit or combining a bed head and timber chest to make seating for your hallway.
If you’d like to embrace the upcycling trend but would rather use readymade pieces, an interior designer will have lots of ideas for home accessories Leicestershire which have been upcycled, which will add unique touches to your home and be much admired for their ingenuity.