If you happen to be playing a Mallett’s Mallett-style word association game (I was once bonked by Timmy Mallett and the experience has stayed with me), and someone says ‘blinds’ (of the window variety), what’s the first thing that springs to mind? I bet it isn’t ‘cool’, ‘funky’ or ‘boutique’. I bet it’s ‘boring’.
Do blinds remind you of things your parents have in their conservatories? That nosy neighbours peer out of in EastEnders? Or which schools use to keep the sunlight out and the kids’ concentration in? Are they, to your mind, practical? Perhaps. Are they aspirational? Absolutely not.
I’m not a mind reader, dear Pink House Guest. It’s just that I, too, used to feel that way about blinds: uninterested, unconvinced – even uncaring. Those were, quite literally, dark days.
But I’ve had a change of heart – because blinds ain’t what they used to be. Now, they appear in some of the world’s hottest hotels, trendiest apartments and lust-worthy work spaces. And thanks to new technologies, fabrics and companies such as Luxaflex who understand that people like their homes to look lovely, blinds are far from being the uncool kid who gets his crisps nicked in the playground. Now, if a window blind were a category of high school student, they’d be the laid-back kid who isn’t trying hard to be cool so therefore totally is (I was never that child). And if someone said ‘blinds’ during Mallett’s Mallett? I’d respond with: ‘trending in summer 2017’. But I’d lose the game, because that’s more than one word.
Still need convincing? Let me prove to you that the hottest blind can take on even the coolest curtain…
1) The members club blind
Generally speaking, where Soho House leads with interiors, everyone else follows. So if they’re installing floral blinds in the country-chic bathrooms of Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, that pretty much ensures floral blinds in bathrooms (or any other room) are now achingly on trend. Ideally styled within a sprawling, decadent bathing space, but a patterned blind can bring a splash of colour to even the cosiest of bathrooms, where there’s barely room to swing a goldfish, let alone splash out on a monster bath.
2) The hi-tech urban blind
Luxaflex Duette blinds keeping thing cool in the city
The Duette's honeycomb design extreme close-up
No-one needs Ugly Naked Guy watching their every move, but at the same time living in the metropolis doesn't have to mean living in a blacked-out box. Enter the Duette Luxaflex blind. This baby is just transparent enough to give you both soft, filtered light and privacy, making it perfect for an urban pad. Plus, its unique honeycomb design traps air within the blinds, which helps insulate your home in winter and keep the heat out in summer (come on summer - you're nearly here!). An added bonus is that the blind improves the acoustics of a room, so that dull roar of the number 93 could be a thing of the past.
3) The Elle Decoration blind
Photo: Alyssa Rosenheck for Elle Decoration
Whereas once you’d have assumed an Elle Decor-worthy bedroom would be awash with wafty linen curtains, now, a simple white blind is perfectly chic enough to grace the pages of this hallowed publication. This (above) is a blind that’s there to make a statement, and that statement is: ‘don’t look at me; look at the rest of this amazing room.’
4) The celebrity blind
Cameron Diaz's actual living room. Design: Kelly Wearstler/Photo: William Abranowicz/Source: Elle Decoration
Cameron Diaz's actual bedroom. Design: Kelly Wearstler/Photo: William Abranowicz/Source: Elle Decoration
I once saw Cameron Diaz in real life. Like her, I was staying at Pennyhill Park hotel in Surrey (though sadly unlike her I wasn't filming a soon-to-be box office hit called The Holiday, alongside Jude Law). Anyway, there she was just walking through the lobby, and it was like some higher being had descended from Planet Fabulous. I was already a huge CamDi fan (she surfs! she sings! she has sperm in her hair!) but this celestial sighting ensured that everything she did from then on would be a sign that I should do the same. So if Cameron has blinds - and not just blinds, but blinds-behind-blinds - in her house, then so should I. And so should you.
5) The interior designer blind
Bedroom designed by Turner Pocock
As I'm starting to dare to believe that our house sale/purchase is actually going to happen, I'm starting to make tentative plans regarding the renovation of our new London home. I'm still at the fall-in-love-with-random-rooms stage of the process, but even at this early stage, I'm pretty sure the rooms devised by interior designer extraordinaire Turner Pocock are going to feature heavily in my mood boards. The TP ladies just GET how to make a home warm and welcoming, colourful and cool, so the fact that they incorporate blinds into some of their schemes speaks volumes.
Shall we have one last game of Mallett's Mallett? OK - the word is..."curtain"...so I say..."final". Because as we all now know, blinds are where it's at!
This post was sponsored by Luxaflex, but as always, all opinions are my own, and if I don't like something, I won't write about it. If you're a brand looking to work with The Pink House, click HERE for my media kit.
