How to find inspiration, and manage inspiration overload
Feeling in a bit of a creative rut with your interior inspiration? We’ve all been there!
Someone recently asked me where to find inspiration, and also how to manage inspiration. I knew exactly what they meant - because we are swamped with inspiration, aren't we?
It is a minefield out there. We are bombarded with advertising and aspirational interiors imagery. Traditionally we've got things like magazines ads and billboards, but of course, as of the last ten years, we now have Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok, and they are 24/7; literally in our faces for a frightening number of hours every single day.
If you think about how much material we are consciously and subconsciously consuming it can be completely overwhelming. It makes it really difficult to find your own creative voice in the midst of all of that noise.
How to hear your own creative voice?
The answer to this is to invest time in getting really clear on your own style and values, your own identity, basically getting to know yourself really well.
In my Fresh Nest e-course, we've got two whole modules on this. We write a style manifesto which is about our style and values, and that's a really helpful tool if that feels like it might be useful for you.
One of the other exercises we do in The Fresh Nest that I'm going to share with you all is The Red Thread exercise.
The red thread exercise
This exercise asks you to look back at all of the homes and interior spaces that you have loved since you were a child. It means going back through your memories and thinking about the first interior space that you fell in love with, whether this was a grandparents house, a best friend's house, your own, a shop you went to, a cinema, whatever it was. Then thinking about when you were an older child, a teenager, a young adult, midlife, and then however old you are now. Then you make a note of all of the spaces that you have always loved. And it's not necessarily based on how things look, it's how you felt in them as well.
You might have loved your grandma's house because of how you felt it within it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to copy what your grandma did in her house, but it's about thinking about the sensory elements in your grandma's house that made it feel so lovely for you.
One of the houses I loved when I was a teenager was my best friend's house. It was the polar opposite to my new build home. It was full of stuff and art and pets, and I just fell in love with it. I felt very at home there. Although I don't want to copy the exact things that were in that home, it had more ‘stuff’ in it than I like. I prefer a more minimal living environment. because of my experience in my best friend's home I've always loved having lots of art on the walls and that tracks throughout my life. I'm always really drawn to homes with loads of art and textiles and soft textures in them.
How about you? What are your red threads? What are the colours and the textures, the styles, the objects, the shapes and the style of the spaces that you have loved throughout your life? This is the beginnings of you finding out what your really core true style is.
Other ways to find your own creative voice:
Shutting off some of the other creative noise. Having a break from Pinterest or Instagram or TikTok or wherever it is that you are receiving most of your interiors inspiration and instead doing the exercise above. This is time really well spent, I promise. Spend some time journaling about your favourite homes, or have a go at writing your style manifesto. If you are somebody who gets very overwhelmed by decisions, if you struggle to know what you like, if you struggle to know what your style is, then I really recommend shutting off some of the other creative noise.
Look outside of the traditional interiors box. Art Director Africa Daley-Clarke did a masterclass for students in my Fresh Nest e-course all about finding your style, and this is one of the things that she recommended that I am always now repeating to students in the course. She talked about how she will take photos of tiles in public toilets or the fabric on a bus seat, nice brickwork that she comes across, or colours in a poster and she uses them as the basis of her interior schemes.
Get outside. I love the colours that are found in nature, whether that is inspiration taken from a landscape, close up of tree bark or a flower petal. I have always been incredibly inspired by the seasons as well and some of the colors that you can find in the season and I will often draw from the seasons when I'm designing.
Look at art. Visit a gallery or museum and experiencing the art in person. If you can't get to a gallery, take some art books out of the library and spend some time flicking through them.
How to extract colours from the inspiration you’ve found. My favourite tool to do this is the Adobe Color website with the American spelling of colour. It's free to use. I use it all the time and they have a couple of really amazing tools on the website. One is called Extract Theme and one is called Extract Gradient. Extract Theme is a little bit more straightforward. You simply upload your photo and then on Extract Theme, it will bring up the colors in each of the photos and it'll give you a dark colour scheme, a light, a neutral color scheme all based on that photo. In the Extract Gradient tool, you can manually move things around to pull together a colour palette based on the photo that you've uploaded.
Look at fashion. I will often use imagery from the world of fashion in my interior concept boards. There is a lot of inspiration to be found in catwalks, photo shoots, set design, shop design. Look out for colours, textures, and shapes you love as well as the feelings that are evoked.
Look at films and TV shows. I know I can't be the only one who fell in love with the interiors in Mad Men! I really love the interiors in Sex in the City, Friends, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and then more recently, Bridgerton. So there's loads and loads of inspiration out there across the TV shows that you watch.
Travel! I'm linking in with history a little bit, because travel doesn't necessarily mean exotic holidays abroad. This might mean visiting a local house or gardens for inspiration there. I especially like visiting historic houses and looking at some of the craftsmanship, colours, textiles and fabrics that are used there, many of which will come around back in fashion again.
Check out old interiors books and magazines. I've got an amazing Terrence Conran book from the 80s that's got some brilliant ideas in it even now. So get to your library, have a look in charity shops and markets, because there is a wealth of inspiration in vintage interiors books.
You are the key
The main thing is that it needs to start with you, your loves, your values, in order for it to feel like a really good representation of who you are. Spend some time drilling down into some of the objects, textures, colours, homes and styles that you've loved for a long time. If you do that, you can rest assured that your homes will always feel like a true and unique reflection of who you are.
And that unique part is really important, isn't it? It's so, so easy to create a home that looks like every other home you come across on Instagram or Pinterest.
But when you create a home that's really based on the things you've always loved and your values, it's guaranteed to feel more interesting and unique.
Good luck finding that inspiration! If you have any tips on how to find creative inspiration in your home, please share them with me in the comments, or via Instagram or email.
