Your guide to a warm winter home with Charlie and Juliet

Winter is a great opportunity to warm up your space, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to elevate your home and create a stylish sanctuary for the cooler months. Interior Designer Juliet Love and Landscape Designer Charlie Albone show us how!

When it comes to creating a warm and welcoming haven, accessories go a long way. One of the easiest ways to create a cosy space is to introduce some textured soft furnishings like throw blankets, delicately placed across the arm of a sofa, or plush cushions in soft textured finishes like velvet or brushed linen, displayed on your sofa or bed. Velvet, wool, woven, plaited or tufted fabrics also add a layer of depth to an otherwise bland space. Think chunky knit blankets and warm fuzzy textures.  

Rugs are also a great way to keep your toes warm on those chilly winter mornings and evenings. Curtains add a sense of warmth to any space, especially if they’re lined. Layering textiles from the floor to the ceiling (from rugs to curtains with cushions and blankets in between), will make the room feel more inviting and considered from a design perspective.

Rich, earthy tones also help to give your home a sense of comfort during the cooler times. Warm neutrals like greige (grey + beige), terracotta, green and inky navy all work well to bring in some depth to an ordinary space.

Natural materials like timber, bamboo and woven storage baskets all help to incorporate a warmer feel to your home. Playing with textures in finishes like timber will again add a sense of sanctuary to your home. Changing the tone of timber using a stain also works well to deepen or darken them.

Creating a warm glow through lighting makes a space seem cosy and calm. Use candles, or soft, warm toned globes in lamps, and dim the lights at night to make the most of lighting for reading or drinking your favourite hot beverage by!  

Seasonal decor that you can bring out during the cooler months are a winter staple - things like large displays of mossy branches, bowls of seasonal fruit like pears or pumpkins, and festive displays of pinecones en masse look great. A large mossy bowl as a centrepiece on a table looks fabulous.  

As the days are shorter, the amount of light your lawn is receiving in winter is significantly less -- it’s like trying to grow your lawn in the shade. To combat this, raise the height of your mower blades, so each individual grass leaf grows longer and has greater ability to suck up valuable sunlight. You need to go further to help it out as well by raking off any leaves and debris to really maximise the time those leaf blades get in the sun. 

Leaf litter can be used as an excellent mulch in your garden beds, it’ll break down to feed the soil as well as improve its structure. It will also help to reduce and supress new weed growth and lock moisture into the soil. Not only will this trick make the garden look much tidier, but also much neater too. 

Your perennial plants will be looking tatty right now as the cold weather really knocks the foliage about so, cut this off to allow lighter down to the ground where it will promote the new shoots to come through. Plants like salvia will have finished flowering and you’ll notice new growth at ground level too – only remove the old growth, this will leave the new shoots to grow for the next season. If you want to double the size of a plant like salvia, rub your fingernail over the end of each shoot. This will promote the leaf buds below it to grow and give you a thicker, bushier plant.

Your deciduous trees will have lost their leaves by now, so take advantage of this and prune out any dead, diseased or rubbing branches. By removing any of these problem growth habits, you’re preventing pathogens from getting into your plants. Then, come spring they’ll bounce back into life and you’ll have a healthy, vigorous plant. 

It’s not all about getting rid of things in winter, you can also add a splash of colour to the garden now, that should carry on through to spring, by simply planting colourful pansies. For the best results, enrich the soil with compost and plant en-mass or pot them up and place them by the door, so they put a smile on your face as you come and go. 

Single colours will give you a stylish and sophisticated look, but a mass of varying colour will also bring cheer and a longer flowering period, because you’ll have a few different varieties doing their thing.

To prolong the flowering period, remove any old, spent or aged looking blooms as this will encourage the plant to put out more flowers.

We hope Charlie and Juliet’s tips inspire you to create a cosy winter home. Looking for more? Check out the video below for more winter tips and tricks!

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