I’ve recently returned from a long-awaited trip overseas; touring France, one of my favourite holiday destinations, with my husband. From Bordeaux to San Tropez, to Paris we soaked up not just the last rays of a fading European summer, but the history, culture, sights and experiences. There’s something about France that excites me every time I visit, I feel like I come alive. Whether it’s the art, the food, wine, furniture, fabrics, I enjoy every minute of every day I am there.
As an interior designer, I find travel incredibly inspiring. I believe that by changing the way people feel about their environment, ultimately can change the way they feel about themselves. This was so true for me walking around the streets of Paris or Bordeaux, I felt so good just absorbing and appreciating the architecture and the elaborate details everywhere we turned. Whenever you look up you see something amazing.
With so much to share I’ll start with my favourite stop, Paris.
A sense of uniformity
Taking the time to appreciate just walking around a city like Paris, it feels very comforting to me. All of the colours of the buildings are all very similar, most of them are sandstone, providing a sense of uniformity around you. I love a sense of uniform and balance, this can be seen in my own design work, my own home or even wardrobe. Plus, when you’re taking the city by foot, it’s easy to stop when you’d like to look inside a shop, museum, or have a coffee and a croissant in a cafe, the options are endless.
In Paris, a city rich with history, the use of natural materials really demonstrates that design can be completely timeless.
Designer difference
When sourcing for my interior design clients in Sydney, we frequent our favourite showrooms that showcase a variety of designers and fabric houses (often from overseas). One of my envies of life in Paris is that designers and fabric houses have their own showrooms, and you get everything so much faster!
Attention to detail gets my attention
As an interior designer, I feel a great sense of responsibility to ensure that the finest attention to detail is applied across every aspect of the home. Attention to detail is incredibly important to me; it’s the combination of those individual details that create the ‘wow’ factor in any space.
In Paris
Inspiration can be found anywhere. After a busy morning or day sightseeing, we enjoyed wonderful cuisine around the city, with ornate, historical design coupled with perfect attention to detail. From the grand to the casual.
Lighting inspiration
Unbeknownst to me until my recent return and uploading the hundreds of photographs I had taken on my expeditions around Paris, we came across some special lighting features. Lighting plays such an important part in any space, and it’s always useful to have inspiration to draw from when we are designing and planning our next design project. Here’s some lighting that I hope inspires you too.
I hope you have enjoyed the first instalment of my French travels and found some inspiration, appreciation and admiration as I most certainly have. Keep an eye out for my next instalment where I will share what else I discovered and documented.
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