Interior Design Inspiration: 10 Instagram Accounts You Should Follow in 2020

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We’re heading into Spring and that can only mean one thing, home renovations.

You’ll find that the Spring and Summer months are the time to revamp the interior of your home. Whether you want to add a dash of colour with a new kitchen splashback or you want to trade in your old wooden staircase for a sleek, modern set with glass balustrades, anything is possible with the right inspiration.

Finding interior design ideas is no longer a struggle now that we have the internet at our fingertips. Whether it’s interior design for the living room or ideas for home improvements you’re looking for, the internet is a great place to start. In fact, you’ll find many decorating ideas in an app that is used by over a billion people: Instagram.

Instagram is all about pretty pictures. Along with Pinterest, it’s one of the best places for interior design inspiration. Here, we’ve listed ten of our favourite Instagram accounts for home improvements; you’ll want to give these guys a follow, too.

Jungalow

Jungalow was started back in 2009 by plant-loving Justina Blakeney. She has a love for bohemian design and you’ll find a lot of warm and rich colours used throughout her interior inspiration posts.

Adding bohemian-themed decor to your home compliments bare spaces well. If you have an open-living situation, or minimal colour throughout your home, incorporating some patterns and warm colours will bring your home to life.

Jungalow has great ideas for using geometric-patterned rugs, bold and quirky pillows, and earthy designs for your chairs and mirrors.

The Spruce

The Spruce helps improve interior decor for over 30-million users every month. They specialise in minimalism and incorporate an abundance of plants in their design tips.

Pattern and texture is a great way to instantly improve the look and feel of your home. Fluffy throws can draw the attention away from an old couch and add colour and warmth to a bare room. If you love a country-cottage vibe, The Spruce displays beautiful images that are sure to get your inspiration juices flowing.

They provide tips on everything home improvement; from tiling to gardening to home repairs. If you’re after a great all-rounder, their Instagram account is for you.

Bigger Than The Three Of Us

Bigger Than The Three Of Us is run by home design blogger Ashley. Ashley provides great interior design inspo on Instagram – her pictures are beautiful.

Again, a bit of a country-cottage vibe going on here. She provides inspiration on interior design for the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and dining room. Her posts are focused on minimalism with hints of colour and contrasting tones.

Patterns and textures play a big part in her interior decor. Spicing up a bare wall with a large piece of art is a great way to add a touch of unique style to your interior.

If you need help revamping your kitchen, Bigger Than The Three Of Us is definitely worth a follow.

Homey Oh My

Homey Oh My is run by Chicago-raised Amy and was founded in 2013. Amy is a lover of minimal design and simple, yet creative interiors.

A lot of Amy’s images are based on white interiors, using natural light to emphasise features. She incorporates a lot of greenery into her home, too. Adding plants to your interior design plans is a great way to bring life, nature and textures into your home. If you’re a fan of all-white-everything, plants are a very subtle way of breaking up the monotone.

Amy’s posts are mainly based around the living area where she focuses on large geometric style rugs and dark accessories. However, she occasionally posts about kitchens and bedrooms, too. If the main focus for your home improvements is the living area, we’d definitely recommend that you check out Homey Oh My.

Bethan Laura Wood

Bethan Laura Wood is run by, you guessed it, Bethan.

Bethan has won many design awards throughout the years, so it’s fair to say she’s good at what she does.

Bethan’s style is incredibly arty. She focuses on bright colours, shapes, and textures. Her Instagram is the perfect source for home improvement ideas if you’re after some showstopping features.

Spruce up your living area with a large bohemian rug. Or install a mosaic splashback behind your sink or hob to really bring her ideas to life.

Although her Instagram doesn’t contain many images of homes, her posts are sure to inspire you.

BEAU-TRAPS

Beau-Traps is run by a London-based interior design blogger. His style is minimal but the pieces that he posts show his love of odd shapes and unusual features.

If colour isn’t your thing, use contrasting shades of different colours to help bring your interior to life. Install Greek artistic pieces or African-inspired woven rugs to add a touch of culture to your home.

Beau-Traps is definitely aimed at people who want to keep their interior design minimal yet intriguing. If this sounds like you, take a look at his Instagram.

Anna Glover Interiors

Anna Glover started her interior design mission back in 2014. Since then she’s become the owner of an award-winning design studio that specialises in all things fashion and luxury wallpaper.

Anna’s Instagram offers an abundance of ideas for using patterns, colours and shapes. Some of her posts are very minimal in design, while others are patterns-on-patterns and very chaotic. It’s safe to say, whatever your style, if you’re in the market for design ideas, Anna Glover Interiors is definitely worth looking at.

Ormiston House Design

Ormiston House Design is a great all-round for interior design.

If you have a family and are in the midst of redecorating your entire home, you’ll find a wide variety of decorating ideas from Ormiston House Design.

Ormiston House Design focuses on the everyday family. Their ideas for decluttering rooms and making the most of small spaces are amazing. They provide ideas for a country-cottage vibe with open brick walls and traditional radiators. As well as ideas for a modern home with contemporary solid furniture and geometric rugs.

If you like minimal colours, bold statement pieces and quirky ideas, this instagram page is for you.

Victorian Road Restoration

Victorian Road Restoration is the online child of Lucy and Dan. Lucy and Dan completed the sale on their home in 2017 and started an Instagram account to record their mass-renovation project.

Industrial, contemporary, minimalistic and bold are words that come to mind when looking through their photos. They’re a massive fan of dark colours, quirky shapes and using a decent amount of metal throughout their interiors.

If you’re partial to an extreme restoration project, Victorian Road Restoration has an abundance of images that are sure to give you some interior design inspiration.

Hey Wanderer

Hey Wanderer is an Instagram account that was created by two best friends from Tennessee. Their style is warm, cosy and full of vibrant colours and patterns.

Hey Wanderer posts content often, so you’ll never be left without something new and exciting to look at.

If you want to introduce a bit of sparkle to your home, warmth to your colour palette or greenery to your accessories, Hey Wanderer is the place to be.

Did you know you can join KLG Glass on Instagram, too? If you want to keep up to date with the work we do, the products we produce and see how we can help you, just give us a follow!

Natural Light in Your Home - KLG Glass

The Importance of Increasing Natural Light in Your Home

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These dreary winter mornings are quite testing. It seems harder to wake up, get out of bed and function in general. Do you ever notice just how much easier it is to spring out of bed on a sunny bright morning? The day seems so full of opportunity and you feel more optimistic and ready for action. 

Natural light plays a big part in our lives, and in our homes it’s especially vital. Let’s have a look at how important natural light is, and how to incorporate more of it.

What is meant by natural light?

Natural sources of light come from the sun. The light enters a room via a large window or a small crack in a door, a well placed skylight, or bouncing off a mirrored surface. Natural light sources of course don’t have to be directly from the sun, but can emulate it. Whether it be the warm soft glow of a setting sun, or the bright light of dawn, the emphasis is on lightness not harshness.

Why is natural light important?

As mentioned earlier, natural light is very important in our lives. From a well-being point of view, we need light to help us wake from slumber. When natural sunlight hits the skin, it triggers the production of vitamin D in our bodies. We need vitamin D to keep inflammation at bay.

Recent clinical studies have looked into whether increased levels of vitamin D can help reduce heart disease, cancer and dementia, too. Undeniably, vitamin D is essential for improved brain function. In this respect, exposure to sunlight is vital in regulating our mood.

How natural light affects mood

It is not just the vitamin D production and subsequent brain function that improves our mood with sunlight. Natural light seems to have an immediate, calming effect on us. When we enter a bright space, we are instantly whisked away to warmer days, and the associated memories – be it a lovely relaxing beach holiday, or the carefree days of our youth. 

How to increase natural light in a room

Everyone would love to float around a lofty home with floor to ceiling, south facing windows, like something straight out of an episode of Grand Designs… The reality for most of us though, is trying to make the most of the light we get through our moderately-sized windows and patio doors. If you’re lucky enough to have large windows, maximise them! Large windows can be dressed delicately, with light coloured, wispy voile curtains or blinds, or have etched patterned glass – privacy need not suffer. 

The majority of us however, are likely to ask how to make a small window look bigger.

Smaller windows obviously let less light into a room, but how can we make them look bigger and make the room appear brighter? This is where your interior design skills come in, as lighting in interior design is just as important as paint or fabric:

  • Curtain colour and fabric
    Avoid big, dark coloured, heavy curtains – these will block light and make the room appear darker and the window appear smaller.

  • Curtain rods
    Frame the window with light and airy curtains that are longer than the frame. Hang them on rods that are set higher and wider than the window – make sure the curtains aren’t too transparent however, or you will be able to see the gaps.

  • Blinds
    If you want to go for blinds, use the plantation or venetian kind in a light colour. Set them in a frame that is wider and longer than the window it covers. Wooden blinds will look lighter than aluminium or plastic blinds, they’re also insulating, helping to prevent heat loss in the colder months.

  • Layering
    You can make windows look even wider by layering curtains – have one set hung even wider than the first set. Layering gives a nice contemporary feel too.

  • Frames
    Adding a wider frame around a window in a light colour, will give the impression that the window is larger.

  • Wall colour
    You may think that painting surrounding walls in white would make a window seem larger and brighter, but it actually has the opposite effect. Paint walls in a slightly darker, cool colour, and keep the window frames white to make them pop. On the wall opposite a window, a lighter colour is a good idea, as it will reflect the light back into the room.

  • Pattern
    Using vertical stripes on a blind or curtains will make a window look longer. Horizontal stripes will make windows look wider.

  • Furnishing
    If you really want to make a feature out of a window and emphasise the size, make sure that furniture around it has a low profile. Think long coffee tables, occasional chairs and chaise longues. The difference in scale tricks the eye into thinking the window is much bigger.
  • Reflection
    A common trick in interior design, is to use reflection to create the illusion of space and light. Why not hang mirrors near the window to reflect the light around the room? Or, use mirrored surfaces in accessories or furniture? Don’t go overboard though, we don’t need to be blinded whilst watching TV or have a hole burned in the carpet!

  • Glass
    Glass shelving, glass tables, glass accessories, glass balustrades. Glass used in place of materials that would ordinarily block out sunlight, is a great way of brightening up a space. Light will pass through these objects and give a lovely ethereal feel to a room. Like a scene out of Frozen…just less cold. 

Can mirrors increase light?

As mentioned briefly above, mirrors and mirrored surfaces can do wonders when it comes to increasing light in a room. Natural light will bounce off of reflective surfaces and light up darker corners the light would not otherwise reach. Mirrors can also make spaces appear larger and lengthen whatever is reflected. 

Having a mirror directly opposite a window could create the effect of having two windows in the room. Having a made-to-measure mirror is not the only way to get reflective surfaces into a room either – mirrored tabletops and drawers are always in fashion, and as well as reflecting the light, they add a touch of glamour, too.

Can you mimic natural light?

You’ve tried everything to accentuate the natural daylight coming into the room, and have made the windows look as big and open as possible. The only other way to make a room lighter is to mimic natural light, with artificial light. 

Light yellows and orange tinted lights are best for our mood and health, so be sure to choose bulbs that give a soft, warm glow. Bright, white light from LED lighting has actually been found to suppress melatonin production upto 5 times more than that of their older lightbulb counterparts. 

Melatonin is the compound that adjusts our biological clock and is known for its antioxidant and anti-cancerous properties. White light is actually blue on the spectrum, and is likened to staring at a phone or computer screen. Who wants that as the lighting source in their home?!

So, throw open your small-to-medium sized windows! Let the sunlight pour in – let it bounce off reflective surfaces, and pass through those glass shelves. Be generous when hanging your curtains, and clever when picking your colour schemes. Master the use of pattern from your tiny armchair. And remember, if you have to resort to artificial lighting – if it’s bright white, then it’s not right!