Home Accessories

Home accessories can make the difference between somewhere we live and somewhere we love.  A living room with a three piece suite and a TV in it is just a living room:  a living room with a couple of pieces of sculpture on the mantel, or some well-chosen photos on the wall, is a comforting lounge. 

The basic “pieces” of a room – cookers and fridges in kitchens; beds and wardrobes in bedrooms – are what make them the rooms they are.  We know a bedroom is a bedroom because it has a bed in it.  Home accessories – the “unnecessary” bits that go over the top – are what make them rooms we like to be in.  Imagine a bathroom, for instance.  It’s got a bath, a sink and a toilet.  What else?  The home accessories we choose for a room are extensions of the people we are – they reflect things that comfort, inspire and engage us.  So our bathroom could be accessorised to show our love of the sea, with pieces of driftwood and bowls of shells.  Or our home accessories in the bathroom could speak to a mind that likes bath-time to be a haven for peace and solitude.  Giant aromatic candles, warm tones, a loofah hanging on a hook. 

The great thing about home accessories is that they can transform any place into our place without the expenditure of a great deal of money.  A high-definition TV or an expensive cooker isn’t a home accessory:  it’s a piece of furniture available only to people who have the money to get the status symbol. 

Home accessories, on the other hand, are inexpensive decorative items that perform no function other than personalisation.  A bedsit can be personalised just as easily as a mansion.  The right prints, the right ornaments or crockery, can make their owners feel that they are choosing a lifestyle without forcing them to pay for it.

Unsurprisingly, then, home accessories have enjoyed the creation of an industry that takes this into account.  Don’t buy a new wardrobe:  accessorise a bedroom so that it feels personal.  An affordable funky vase or crockery set can transform a plain living room into a room lived in.  So the aisles of home improvement stores and supermarkets fill with tealights and the occasional tables of the nation are covered in bowls of stones. 

It’s a good thing, in these straitened times.  The collapsed property ladder is bringing people around to the idea that they live where they live, rather than occupying it on a short-term basis until they can sell it.  Home accessories are finally offering everyone a real way to make a house a home.