The building is the client. That's our mantra, and we've found that if you listen to what the host building tells you to do, it tends to work.
Classic, trend-free is always best. Instagram has enabled trends to set in so quickly, and become tired equally fast. One's home is inevitably a self portrait, and if you trust yourself and listen to your gut instinct when making design decisions, the result will feel unique and genuine.
Don't rush into making decisions about a space without having lived in it for a while, ideally through all the seasons. See how the light affects the room at different times of day and in different months.
Don't feel you have to have an extractor hood in your kitchen. I have yet to see an extractor hood that I like the look of. If you need to extract the smell of something you are cooking, then maybe you shouldn't be eating it! An open sash window is a brilliantly efficient, inexpensive, and beautiful extractor fan.
Yes, UK building regs require extraction from a newly installed kitchen, but a tiny one up in the corner of a room (the size of a bathroom extractor) will satisfy the regs. These can be set within the thickness of the wall and then covered up with a cast iron grille that's painted in with the wall, so that they resemble a traditional airbrick or vent.
These are a pet hate of mine, and inevitably result in characterless, flat, pancake-like expanses of floor. You will never be able to make a floor look aesthetically correct in a period building if using an engineered product. Even "distressed" or "antique" finishes, with their "tumbled" edges must be avoided at all costs. The "planks" are always too short (to make shipping and storing the product easier), so one ends up with lots of small lengths and too many header joints. The header joints (where one plank meets another) on a traditionally laid floor will be at 400mm or so intervals (as they correspond to the joists the boards are fixed to). Engineered flooring often results in header joints spuriously distributed across the floor, often annoyingly close to one another. The cracks between the boards on a traditional floor, coupled with the pairs of nail heads, provide a rhythm, a visual cadence across the surface. Don't get me started on hiding the requisite expansion gaps with little scotia trims fixed to the skirting...yuck!
Underfloor heating and traditional floorboards are not happy bedfellows, and if you are going to use underfloor heating, there are two products I'd recommend that are compatible: Dinesen supply very beautiful oak and douglas fir planks, and Paul Webb uses kiln dried oak planks that are bonded to ply - same principle as engineered but put together on site with lovely long boards. These boards can be spaced so header joints are visually accurate, and they can make nosings in the same material for steps etc. enabling you to get the right look, so you'd never know it's not an original floor.
When thinking about colour schemes, instead of applying the contents of sample pots to a patch of wall, paint up some larger sheets of ply or plasterboard that are on site, ideally A2 sort of size. You can then move these around the room to get a feel for how the colour works in different lighting conditions within the space. Also, it's often the case that in a house one might use the same colour twice, so being able to move a sample board from one area to another is useful.
Make sure you recycle as many elements as possible when considering changing an interior. People change their interiors so frequently and it's so sad to see so much waste. If you can work with what you inherit in a building, then do.
I ban all metal angle beads on our projects, much to the chagrin of plasterers, who love the ease with which they can bring the trowel up to a defined edge, when applying a skim finish. I find these sharp edges and dead flat surfaces incongruous with any Edwardian or earlier building. Depending on the building, introduce a timber dowel detail, drag a plastic bag down the corner, or just feel the edge by hand to create a softer corner. It's amazing how the play of light and shade across a softer, slightly undulating surface can affect the whole atmosphere of a space. Not only are gentle edges friendlier on the eye, they feel nicer to walk past.
I also ban grout spacers. With very few exceptions, tiles and flagstones in period properties should in my opinion be butted closely together, with the resultant crack filled with grout, or in the case of some floor tiles / flagstones, a dry mix of lime and cement brushed in (and left to go off via the moisture in the air over time). Tilers love grout spacers, because it makes their lives easier should the tiles vary a fraction in size, or the surface they are tiling on undulates. Any discrepancies can be lost in the margin of the 2mm or wider grout line. Grout lines are ugly, and often spoil the tiles themselves as they create a grid. There are great ways of staggering the laying of tiles to combat inconsistent sizing, but ultimately I rather like seeing little human inconsistencies in period buildings.
