As the long, dark winter days slowly ebb away into distant memory and sweet blossoms fill the trees, embrace the start of a new season with these interiors ideas for a spring refresh. From soothing, earthy pastels to bring a feeling of calm, to transforming a corner of your kitchen with the new café core trend. Alternatively, awaken your senses with a beautiful new season scent, like Great House Farm Stores‘ new candle, Spring, with its notes of moss, freshly cut grass and meadow blooms.

Earthy pastels to soothe

When it comes to paint shades, pastels are still popular, but they’re less saccharine, with earthier tones. And they have a depth and richness that can give a room an unequivocal sense of calm. Joa Studholme, Farrow & Ball’s colour curator, has described the importance of earthy, clay based tones in their eponymous palette.

“Rich clay tones continue to nurture us in times of uncertainty, and they’re getting steadily more popular as many of us look for comfort,” she says. Try Farrow and Ball’s warm-hued Jitney, for subtle brown tones and a hint of pink.

Annie Sloan also has a gorgeous range of earthy colours, like the shades pictured below, with Piranesi Pink on the walls and Carnaby Yellow, French Linen and Ticking in Olive on the furniture.

Café core kitchens

Coffee stations have become a mainstay in modern kitchens, but for a spring refresh, they’ve been taken up a notch and turned into café core. Much like spathrooms, people are looking to bring weekend luxury to their homes.

According to Pinterest Predicts 2024, café core has had a massive increase in searches, with coffee station décor up 145% and coffee bar styling up 1,125%.

So what will you need to create the café look? Firstly, it has to be cosy, so get rid of the clutter and find a snug corner.

Up your coffee machine game to perfect your flat white – the days of instant coffee are over – and think about adding a chalk board or a peg letter board (Pinterest have also reported that chalk sign ideas are up 100%). Go for penny round tiling to evoke chic European cafes, half café shutters (or half café curtains with slim brass drapery rods) and a sink skirt.

If you don’t have enough space in your kitchen, you could always set up an al fresco cafe with a bistro chair set in your garden. Aldi and Asda currently have some great ones, and Habitat have some brilliant Hay inspired pieces for a fraction of the cost.

Bring in zingy brights

YesColours are a brand that are making a big difference in the paint market. Firstly, they’re water based, with 0% added VOCs and 0% microplastics. Secondly, they have a full range of eye-popping colours to try.

Some of their latest shades are Passionate Teal (pictured on the left), which YesColours has described as “a deep, stable colour that evokes tranquility but with positive green energy” and that “the colour reminds them of an Art Deco velvet armchair, a glorious Peacock feather, and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner cyan movie grading”.

Pictured on the right is their Electric Yellow paint colour, which they describe as “so stimulating and energetic, you could probably charge your phone from it. This is our sulphur yellow paint colour with a green undertone to add that zesty zing. It’s great to use as a standalone colour or with lilacs or greys.”

It taps in especially well to the trend of painting your woodwork (think picture rails and cornicing) in a stand-out colour. If you’re not sure where to start, you can book a colour consultation with YesColours to get you started.

Refresh your home with a delicious new scent

Bringing a new scent into your home is a glorious way to welcome those first signs of a season change. As we shrug off the dark depths of winter and open the doors to let in the light, Great House Farm Stores candles encapsulate that perfectly. They explain how “scent, as much as food, can be our partner in celebrating or capturing the season and in changing our emotional responses”.

Founded by sisters Roanna Day and Abbie Price, Great House Farm Stores’ ethos is around slow living and sustainability. Each of their candles is made with natural wax, an organic wick, and essential and botanical oils. They’re hand-poured in small batches in the Welsh countryside in hand-crafted ceramic candle pots made by skilled potters in the UK. They also run a brilliant candle refill service.

Try Great House Farm Stores Spring ‘24 candle (pictured), which has uplifting notes of “luscious, green and floral layering of oakmoss, freshly cut grass and meadow blooms”. The refillable candle pot in its soothing green shades of glaze on flecked clay is made by British potter Lucy Young.

Big frills

Ruffles have been dominating the shops for a while and they’re certainly here to stay. For some of the chicest frills, Colours of Arley have hands-down the best on the market. Pictured below is their cocktail cushion in Tobacco & Coconut. Made from a recycled linen-look fabric, the body has a midi stripe and the frill has a skinny stripe. You can pick from a range of colour combinations like Acid & Baby Pink, the vibrant Postbox & Flares and Lime & Cypress.

More frills to ruffle your feathers come in the form of The Secret Linen Store’s Cobalt Cora 100% linen bedlinen, Molly Mahon’s frill tablecloths, and Rose & Grey’s Amuse La Bouche candy stripe ruffle napkins.

Revamp your Spring tablescapes with colourful tableware

Not much says Spring refresh like updating your tableware for a summer full of picnics. Oliver Bonas say that their Spring/Summer 2024 mood board is “inspired by all kinds of flora and fauna. From abstract mark making, zebra-inspired stripes and tie dye techniques that mimic fossil-like patterns, experimentation and playfulness.”

There’s also a lot of colour. Try the ceramic stripe oil bottle and jug, the octopus platter, the Rayos pink and orange resin salad servers and the sculptural gin glasses.

For more colourful tableware that won’t break the bank, Primark covers everything from two-tone coupe glasses to their chic stripe glass jugs and tumblers. It also has a new spring collection called Soft Tropics to peruse that includes portable lights, outdoor cushions and candles. M&S and Next are also great ports of call for budget-friendly outdoor tableware.

Upcycle your furniture

A Spring refresh doesn’t have to be all about a full redecoration. You could bring in smaller elements of earthy tones and upcycle your furniture. Facebook Marketplace is full of people having spring clear-outs and there are some lovely pine drawers to be snapped up ready to be upcycled for a bargain.

Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint is the perfect versatile furniture paint, and you won’t need to sand or prime your furniture first. You can also used it on wood, metal, laminate and concrete, and you can use it indoors and outdoors. Think painted scallops, thick stripes, pops of colour or folk florals.

Annie Sloan also has some brilliant inspiration like Lucy Tiffney’s Botanical Cabinet, these Botanical Folk Drawers inspired by Josef Frank and Surrey Lane Home’s Oxford Navy Folk Art Chest.

Add texture with a Kilim rug

We’ve been seeing texture creeping into our interiors for some time and it has so many benefits. It can add visual interest and cosiness, and create depth to a room, all of which can make us feel more relaxed without even realising. Texture stops a space from feeling flat and evokes our senses.

Kilim rugs are a gorgeous way of bringing colour, texture and warmth to your interiors for a Spring refresh. Representing rich craftsmanship and culture, the word Kilim has Turkish origins, and refers mainly to the weave of the textiles, which while varied are a pile-less flat weave. Kilim rug techniques cover slit weaving, plain weaving, interweaving, brocade and Soumak weaving, which introduces mathematical patterns into the weave.

Weaver Green’s Kilim rugs are ethically produced and made entirely from recycled plastic bottles but cleverly have the feel of wool. The Andalucia Zahara rug (pictured below) is hand-loomed using recycled plastic yarn. They can be used indoors or outdoors (they’re UV stable), and are great for high traffic areas like the kitchen or hallway given that they’re stain resistant and machine washable.

Soften your lighting scheme

When it comes to interiors, lighting is key. J Adams & Co is a company that just gets it right (for a start, they plant a tree for every light they sell). Each one of their lights is hand-crafted in the UK in a factory they’ve run in Birmingham’s industrial quarter for over half a century.

J Adams & Co explain that their Strata light (pictured below) “plays with materiality and the beauty of light refraction through reeded glass, providing an enchanting focal point”. Each piece is made using the highest quality precision-cut glass and engineered solid brass to emit a delicate light and is the perfect way to make a subtle, but statement Spring refresh to make your home more relaxing.