Ten home fashion tips for the unfashionable

By Megan Lane
BBC News Online Magazine

We are a nation obsessed with design and interiors, if the queues for the Ideal Home Show are any guide. But if what's hot and not has passed you by, here's a rundown of things you might need to know.

Luxe fabrics, cosy throws - very now

Would-be Lawrence Llewellyn Bowens are cooing over the solar-powered garden accessories and Jacuzzis with built-in DVD players at the Ideal Home Show in London.

In a nation where one's home is one's castle, any showcase of style ideas - be it on TV or in an exhibition hall - proves to be a huge draw. But how to pick between the passé and the present? Trend watchers have identified key themes which will be hard to avoid.

1. Wallpaper is back. So too is patterned fabric. Designers have tired of white walls and pared-down minimalism, and instead embraced romantic patterns and textures. Need proof? Look no further than Posh's recent video for This Groove, in which Mrs Beckham writhed against a wall papered in a lush botanical print.

2. While the chintz remains chucked, only the hardy persist in aping a New York loft apartment aesthetic. Now we dream of open-plan, comfy, cosy spaces that spill from lounge into kitchen and out to a landscaped garden for al fresco feasts. The much-heralded M&S Lifestores aim to sell this combination of flair and comfort to Middle England.

Foodies want a great room in which to indulge their passion

3. The kitchen is no longer a utility room - it is to be eaten in, enjoyed, put on display. Sales of appliances and kitchen furniture are booming - the market is worth £977m - with equipment once only seen in top restaurants in demand. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is among the home-owners to have spent an exorbitant sum on a new kitchen, including £67,000 on a free-standing cooker alone.

4. Colours inspired by food and drink look particularly tasty this year, with aubergine, wine red, chocolate, and a whole harvest basket of greens to choose from.

5. In the smallest room in the house, bigger is most definitely better. For what's the point in installing a saucepan lid-sized shower head and statement bathtub if there's no room left for that colour co-ordinated towel collection?

Who let that woman in the house?

6. Just as TV makeover programmes have launched thousands of DIY decorators, high-end property porn (Channel 4's Grand Designs, oooooh) has fired our enthusiasm for cutting edge, tailor-made homes. Each year some 15,000 self-build projects get underway - some estimates put that figure as high as 25,000.

7. Eco-chic is where it's at. Build from sustainable - or recycled - materials. Incorporate high-spec insulation and smart ventilation and heating. And when it comes to finishing touches, rubbish has risen phoenix-like from the recycling plant, with tiles made from ketchup bottles, lampshades from kitchen steamers and planters from tyres.

8. Retro has never gone out of fashion - it's just a matter of which decade is hippest to reference. Once it was de rigueur to collect art deco items, or to stock up on elegant Danish classics from the 1960s. Today it's a mix of old with new - chandeliers with plywood portraits, vintage four-posters with reupholstered junk shop chairs.

Grayson Perry's pots go for £25,000

9. Craft is the new fine art. A ceramicist, Grayson Perry, won the Turner Prize. Jake and Dinos Chapman were nominated for a series of carved wooden figurines, which at first glance appeared ancient and at second turned out to be clutching McDonald's fries and shakes. And when Arts Minister Estelle Morris moved into her new office, she chose crafts over artworks by YBAs.

10. Wishful thinking... an end of an era for wooden floors (laminates look too plasticy; the real deal too chilly and too noisy underfoot) and the ubiquitous leather sofa. Their heyday has surely come and gone.