Turning a Room from Spare to Special with Couture Living

 

Ever since we crammed all of our wares into our one bedroom rented Tooting flat, we knew our first London home had to have that second all-important extra bedroom. So, you can imagine our glee when our first London purchase had the space we were looking for. We had some grand plans about turning this into a dressing room – but it was also a great opportunity for us to finally host friends and family without getting the airbed out.

Until recently, we’d been sneaking into our spare room to grab clothes and hang washing. It’s got a glorious window overlooking a listed building opposite the train tracks, but it was a bit of a fish bowl to be honest. All it took was the 08:43 train to Sutton to whizz past and the carefree commuters would catch a glimpse of us in our undies.

That’s why we were in desperate need for some kind of window treatment. While we adore the pink velvet curtains in our main bedroom, we were super keen to find something a little more practical in this room. We’ve been scoping out blind options since we moved in and to be honest, it wasn’t going very well. Our windows are either too big, have handles in the wrong place or open in the most convoluted manner.

 

 

Enter Couture Living, who approached us and demystified the whole process of blinds shopping by kindly gifting us a set for the spare room. Having been given the pick of the litter when it comes to their vast range of fabrics – including some absolutely stunning Morris & Co. patterns – we were spoilt for choice. Luckily, Couture Living offer a rendering tool on the website that allows you to select the fabric of your choice and see it come to life, which helped us visualise exactly how the blinds might look.

Still not 100%? Then we’d suggest ordering some samples – it made the whole process a lot easier and you could really get a feel for the fabric.

 

In terms of look, we wanted something quite fun for the guest room. Although we looked at more traditional patterns from designers such as Nina Campbell, we decided to opt for something a bit more contemporary. We had bagged the FYRESDAL day bed from Ikea for the room, so we wanted a fabric that would complement the dark metal frame but still feel light and airy. After going back and forth we whittled it down to the Clio Jet pattern from Studio G. We loved the playful nature of the spots and how we can continue to layer the room with pattern and colour as we continue decorating.

Now we know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, we didn’t choose it because of the infamous Zara dress of 2019!

Once we had settled on the fabric it was time to place an order. Couture Living’s handy measuring guide makes it very simple to measure-up and sort your dimensions. We then had to simply choose our chain colour and placement. As we chose two separate blinds for each window pane we opted to have our chains both on the left hand side, so it wouldn’t look like we were trying to be symmetrical as the two sections are not the same size.
 

As Couture Living’s blinds and curtains are made-to-measure in the UK, it was about two weeks for them to be manufactured and arrive (super speedy!) – and we couldn’t wait to put them up!
 

Before and after

Further good news was that the installation process is also a piece of cake. All you’ll need is a power drill to fix the brackets to the wall or ceiling (wherever you measured from). We opted for the actual window frame so they went in flush and stopped most of the light coming in – perfect for giving our guests a serene place to relax.

 

 

We were super impressed about how well the fabric hangs. They are a solid construction and the fabric weight means that they definitely make the room more cosy. Having something that’s built to last is important to us as this room will get a lot of footfall and we want to make sure it can be used rather than viewed.
 

 

And that’s how we took our guest bedroom from spare to special with Couture Living. Perfect timing with the festive season coming up. But remember… like fish, guests go off after three days…

David & Mark x

 

This post is a gifted partnership with Couture Living. For more information on working with us, head here.

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