If this is your first read of mine, welcome. I’m Lilly. I’m an interior designer based in the drizzly Peak District in the UK.

Firstly..

‘Tactility: the physical quality of a surface that you experience through touch, such as its softness, roughness, weight, or warmth.’

As a designer obsessed with creating calm, organic and mainly neutral spaces, it is one of my favourite (and most used) ways to give a room depth and interest without making it busy. Changing the way something feels, for example the grain in wood or the weave of a fabric, can completely influence how we feel about the space around it too.

When you start looking for tactility in a space, you will notice what falls flat. For example, in your own space, look around. If all the surfaces are smooth, bring in something with more grain or weave. If the room has lots of hard finishes, soften it through upholstery, curtains or a lovely rug. That is one of the simplest ways to figure out what’s ‘missing’ before buying anything new and to be honest, more often than not, your room just needs more contrast between the materials already in it.

Textiles, such as rugs, upholstered items and curtains, are perfect for this. They can change the weight of a room instantly without changing the structure or ‘bones’ of it. They also shift with the seasons and can be changed out too - so summer tends to suit lighter linens and looser weaves, while winter brings back heavier fabrics, fuller cushions and wool. The bones stay the same, but the way it lands changes.

That is where my version of luxury sits as a designer - in the materials that add something beyond just appearance.

It is also precisely the thinking behind the pieces we are beginning to develop at What Lilly Loves, and there is more coming on that very soon but for now, my midweek brain dump comes to an end.

Thanks for reading and see you Sunday,

Lilly x

I have to start by saying thank you for all your lovely messages after last week’s Edit. So many of you told me what you’d been cooking, changing around at home and getting up to. That has become my favourite part of writing this. I send my little thoughts lovingly out into the world and then they find their way back to me with all of yours lovingly attached too.

As I’m writing this, it is absolutely throwing it down outside. Proper dark skies, thunder, rain bouncing off the windows, lamps on in the middle of the afternoon and my laptop balanced on my lap. I know I have spent the last week protesting the end of summer, but I have to admit, this is quite cosy.

This week feels like a collection of things from life: I’m sharing a recipe I’ve made for years, attempting something new in the garden, setting myself a small challenge for the year ahead and, of course, slipping in one interiors idea for you to steal.

So, have you got your coffee ready?

One from my kitchen -

My walnut, roasted garlic & basil pesto.

I’ve actually shared this on Instagram (@whatlillyloves) before, but I’ve never put the recipe anywhere, so I thought I’d bring it over here where it can live with us permanently. Pesto is one of those things I don’t measure, which is not the best thing to say right before sharing a recipe! Lol. But I promise it really is better when you taste it as you go.

I use a gigantic handful of basil (I’m using as much of the homegrown stuff as possible because my plants are so healthy) and walnuts instead of pine nuts, partly because I love the deeper flavour and partly because walnuts are something I always have in the cupboard.

Add the basil to your food processor with a good handful of walnuts, plenty of grated parmesan and really good extra virgin olive oil. I roast a few cloves of garlic beforehand until they’re soft and sweet and add those too (instead of using raw garlic), then I put in the tiniest drizzle of honey, not enough to make the pesto sweet, just enough to mellow everything.

Add sea salt, lots of black pepper and keep adding the olive oil until you get a consistency you like, and that really is it. Taste, adjust, add more parmesan (because if you’re anything like me, you definitely will) and stop when you’re happy.

This week I used it in a courgette, pesto and ricotta lasagne, which was exactly the sort of dinner you make when the garden is still providing summer produce but the weather is starting to turn and you crave something warm. I added chicken to ours, but it would be just as good without it.

If you want the full lasagne recipe, tell me below and I’ll make it again and put it in next Sunday’s Edit. So consider this your chance to influence next week’s dinner in our house!

An experiment from the garden -

The hydrangeas have gone over and it’s always a sad sight. They give so much joy for such a long stretch of summer, but instead of letting that be the end of them this year, I’m attempting to dry some. I use the word attempting very loosely.

I love seeing dried hydrangeas in autumn with that gorgeous, slightly faded look, and it feels special knowing they have come straight from your own garden. You’ve watched them grow, waited for them to flower, enjoyed them outside all summer and then they get a second life indoors for another season.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a bit of experimenting, and the main thing seems to be not cutting them too early. You want the flower heads to have started drying naturally on the plant and feel slightly papery, not super fresh or soft. I’ve cut mine with a decent length of stem, removed the lower leaves and I’m trying a simple drying method in a bucket with a few inches of water for them to stand in. The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) recommends air drying flowers somewhere with good ventilation and low light, which helps reduce the risk of mould and colour bleaching, so mine are being watched with the level of concern reserved only for a sourdough starter.

So far, so good..

But this is where I need you. If you are the person who has perfect dried flowers all over the house every year, please tell me exactly what you do because I am very much learning as I go. I’ll report back.

Something I want to get better at -

Eating with the seasons.

Growing some of our own food this year has made me realise how little attention I’ve previously paid to what is actually in season. I know the obvious ones, strawberries and tomatoes in summer, pumpkins in autumn, root veg in winter, but beyond that I’ve never given it too much thought about what exactly is at its best at different points in the year.

This summer I’ve tried to change that. We’ve grown tomatoes, peppers, spring onions, figs, potatoes, cauliflowers and strawberries, with carrots still taking their time and cucumbers growing in abundance! We’ve also planted asparagus, and throughout it all, I’ve been researching varieties, growing seasons and when everything should be ready.

There is something pretty wholesome about allowing the season to decide what ends up on your plate, it makes food feel a bit more connected to the time of year and it gives you these tiny things to look forward to as the months pass by. Mine this summer were definitely the tomatoes.

I’ve made a promise to myself that over the next year I want to get much better at knowing what is in season and letting that guide what I eat a little more and I’m thinking this could become a little recurring part of Slow Sunday.

Maybe once a month I choose one ingredient that is in season, learn a little more about it and make something with it for us all to try. I actually think I’d love doing that.

Would you?

An idea for you to steal -

Replacing table lamps with wall lamps.

I love a table lamp, obviously, but in some spaces taking the light off the surface makes everything feel so much cleaner and more intentional. Over a console, beside your bed or even above a little kitchen shelf, a wall light gives you the same soft pool of light without taking up any of the usable surface underneath it.

It also makes the room feel more considered because the lighting becomes part of the architecture of the space, and not just something added on at the end, and in smaller rooms especially, freeing up that little bit of surface space can make more of a difference than you’d think.

So if you’re renovating, this is definitely one to think about before the electrician disappears because it is much easier to wire it in now. And if you’re not renovating, there are some really lovely plug-in and rechargeable wall lights around now too, so you can steal the idea without opening up a wall.

Simple, practical and a detail that can make a room feel completely different!

With Volume Six, I’ll leave you with a very good pesto, some hydrangeas I’m trying not to ruin, a little mission to eat more seasonally and one design idea for you to try. If you make the pesto, have a go at drying your hydrangeas or try the wall light idea, tell me. Hearing what you take from these edits warms my heart.

And one thing before you go: I’m curious, what would you like to see more of in these edits? Recipes, gardens, interiors, little design lessons, things I’m trying at home or something completely different. I want The Slow Sunday Edit to keep evolving with us.

Also, if enough of you want the courgette, pesto and ricotta lasagne, I’ll put the full recipe in next Sunday’s Edit.

Have a lovely day whenever this finds you, and thank you for spending a little bit of yours here with me.

Until next time,

Lilly x

I know, I know, it’s not even September yet, but I’m trying to be ahead of the trend here, so let’s talk about autumn and I’ll try not to cry.

As much as I hate to admit it, this is actually the best time to start thinking about how your home is going to feel over the next few months, because the shift into autumn happens nice and gently at first, and then one evening it’s dark before dinner and you’re hunting for the extra bed throws.

So here are a few ways you can bring that autumn feeling into your home in early September without going full pumpkin spice.

• Introduce one heavier texture. You do not need to fill the house with chunky knits overnight, just one slightly heavier linen throw, a wool cushion or a thicker rug is enough to make things feel softer and more seasonal.

  

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• Introduce one slightly darker fabric. Just a couple of accents, tones like tobacco linen, a nice oat tone or a chocolate-brown stripe can be enough to anchor a very pale room going into September. But don’t overdo it and do not rush. Early September still has warmth and light in it, so keep your base soft and summery, then layer in one or two deeper notes and resist going full maple wreath overnight.

  

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• Slowly start to shift your scent profile. You can keep the house feeling light and late-summer, but swap the very fresh, citrusy scents for something a little deeper and more grounding, like fig leaf, cedar, vetiver or sandalwood. It’s such a subtle change, but it alters the mood of a room without tipping straight into chai latte season.

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• Swap flowers for branches and seasonal stems. Early September is perfect for this because you still have that end-of-summer looseness, but you can start bringing in things with a little more structure, olive, eucalyptus, berry branches, dried seed heads, grasses, even something foraged from the garden. I’m currently experimenting with drying my hydrangeas, and I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about how that’s going. Lol.

  

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• Use candlelight. Just a few simple candles or tea lights in the evening, especially on the dining table or next to a lamp, makes a room feel instantly more intimate.

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And no, guys, I won’t lie, that did hurt me to write.

Summer is my favourite season and watching it slowly start to fade always gets me a little bit. But my perovskia has only just flowered, so as far as I’m concerned summer has only just started and I’ll be clinging onto that logic for as long as possible. There is so much beauty in the change though - the darker evenings, the colour of the trees and the excuse to make home feel warmer again.

Summer lovers, we’re in this together. 🤍

See you Sunday,

Lilly x

I really love that this is starting to feel like something we’re building together. I share what’s been on my mind, you tell me what you’ve tried, what you’ve done or what you’ve been thinking about too, and it makes the whole thing feel more like a conversation than me just sending something out onto the internet.

As I was writing down ideas for this week, I noticed there was a bit of a theme without me really meaning for there to be one: simplicity. I find some things nowadays so overcomplicated and overdone, and the things I gravitate towards the most are the simplest, whether that’s a recipe, an outfit, a room or a tablescape.

So for Volume Five, that’s where we’re going - the beauty of simplicity, and all the little ways it can make everyday life feel that bit more beautiful.

The simplicity of good food -

Chicken Milanese with lemony rocket

Starting off with exactly the sort of food I mean when I talk about simplicity: really good ingredients thrown together with plenty of parmesan lol.

For the Milanese, butterfly a chicken breast and bash it nice and thin. Coat it in flour, then beaten egg, then panko breadcrumbs seasoned with salt and plenty of black pepper. Shallow fry in olive oil for a few minutes on each side until golden, crispy and cooked through.

Throw a big handful of rocket into a bowl and make a quick dressing with fresh lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, a little honey, flaky sea salt and black pepper. Toss it through the rocket with plenty of shaved parmesan, then pile it over the hot chicken.

Add more parmesan if required (it’s always required) and enjoy.

That’s it. Nothing fancy, just crispy, salty, lemony goodness - aka all of the best things.

The simplicity of setting the table -

This summer I have seen an abundance of beautiful tablescapes, which is essentially just the art of styling a table, from the linens and crockery to the flowers, candles and everything in between. But there’s a fine line between making one feel special and making it feel like nobody is actually allowed to eat at it.

For me, the perfect table needs to feel considered but ultimately relaxed, like I’ve tried but I haven’t tried. I want people to feel comfortable passing plates, tearing bread and putting things down wherever there is space, and there are a few little touches I think make such a difference to that ease: a proper butter dish and butter knife, nice little table-sized salt and pepper grinders, linen napkins, a carafe of cold water and always fresh bread. It’s the little things that make a table feel more approachable and not so formal and like someone has got to ask for something.

We also tend to overdo the centrepieces too, I see a lot of big floral displays and pillar candles, but I find it all a little too heavy and formal for entertaining. I much prefer smaller pockets of light from tea lights in glass holders, with little posies of freshly cut seasonal stems, even a couple of simple vases are plenty. I love formality in the right setting, but in others it can start to feel a little contrived.

You really don’t need much to make an impact of create the perfect table. The table doesn’t need to be the main event - the people (and the food!) are.

The simplicity of a really good day -

It was my birthday this week and I used to have this idea that birthdays needed to involve something extravagant - I wanted to be away somewhere, have big plans and basically make a whole month of it. Now, my idea of birthday heaven is the complete opposite: an early gym session, a coffee on the way and then off to choose my birthday perfume.

One thing about me is that scent is a huge thing. I love having a different perfume for certain holidays, ages and little chapters of my life because smelling it again years later instantly takes me back there. So, straight over to Wilmslow, and this year’s choice was actually an old favourite, L’Eau Papier.

The day ended at home with homemade pizzas using the best dough recipe. I used semolina flour underneath the dough this time and the base and crust went super crispy, so if you make pizza at home, try it.

Gym, perfume, pizza and my dogs. Apparently my requirements for the perfect birthday have become very straightforward, and I was genuinely living my best life.

The simplicity of good styling -

My case for simple styling. I see styling overcomplicated all the time - on social media, Pinterest and in real life, there seems to be this idea that if you have an empty space or coffee table, you need to own or buy loads of things to fill it, but you really don’t.

For instance, on a bookcase, start with what you already have. For example, a book with a pretty spine, magazines you’ve kept and love, a lovely bowl you brought home from a trip or a vase or candle. Things that actually mean something to you will always make your home feel more like yours. Arrange them at different heights, stack a couple of books, create little groups and leave empty space around them.

Remember quality over quantity. So if you’re choosing a bowl or vase for a coffee table, it’s better to have one piece with more size and presence than loads of tiny things dotted around - nothing too oversized, obviously, just something substantial enough to hold its own. Choose coffee table books you’ll actually pick up and read, maybe they’re about places you love, subjects you’re interested in or things that tell us a little bit about you.

If you look around and think, Lilly, I don’t own any of these lovely things, well, let yourself collect them. The next time you’re at an antiques market, travelling or you see something you love, bring it home - forget whether it’s cool or whether it’ll ‘go’. If you love it, that’s the biggest sign that it will absolutely ‘go’.

In one sentence: buy fewer things, but better things, and leave plenty of room around them.

So next time you’re setting the table for family or friends, wondering what to cook for dinner, getting dressed in the morning or styling that coffee table for the hundredth time, remember that you probably don’t need to add more. The simplest version, done really well, will always feel the most effortless.

Maybe that’s the thought to take into this week: before you add more, see what happens when you simplify it.

Have a lovely Sunday, and thank you, as always, for spending a little bit of yours here with me.

Until next week,

Lilly x

Between renovating our own homes and designing for our clients, I’ve accumulated a large list of things I think about when I walk into any project, some are big design decisions, but a lot of them are really boring things like where you’re going to plug the hoover in. I’m not claiming to have all the answers here. Every house, budget and person is different, there will always be things you learn by doing it yourself, but there are lots of decisions that are so much easier to make while a house is already being pulled apart than they are six months later when everything has been plastered lol.

I could tell you it will probably cost more than you thought, take longer than you planned and there will definitely be a point (or several) where you wonder why you even started, but you know all of that already.

So, here are a few from my list.

Start with how you actually want to live -

Sounds like common sense, right? But before we get excited talking about paint colours, kitchens or sofas, I think the most important question is: what do you want this house to let you do?

It sounds obvious, but it can be easy to default to designing around the way your previous home was and end up making the same decisions (and mistakes!) all over again. I always find it helpful to play out a normal day in the house before anything is real. Go through things like: where are you making your coffee in the morning? Where do your shoes get kicked off when you come home? When friends and family come over, where do you want everyone to sit? If you’re eating outside, how are you getting everything from the kitchen into the garden?

These questions can feel like an instant headache sometimes, but they’re the things you’ll actually do every day. Creating a good and functional layout isn’t just about getting everything to fit on a floor plan, it should make your life in the house that little bit easier.

Decide what you don’t want to see -

There’s a difference between a ‘minimal’ room and one that functions that way. A calm home isn’t about being the person who owns nothing, it’s about making decisions that give everyday things somewhere sensible to hide.

If you’re starting from scratch, think about what you want to conceal, all the ordinary stuff you don’t want to see. (E.g. the toaster, coffee machines, air fryers, phone chargers, the printer, Wi-Fi equipment, hoovers, bins, laundry baskets, cleaning products, dog leads, straighteners and all the incredibly glamorous things that come with being alive.)

If you know you want a clean kitchen, plan the appliance cupboard now. If you hate toothbrush chargers all over the bathroom, consider power inside appropriate cabinetry with your electrician. If the cordless vacuum is going into the utility room, give it somewhere to charge and be stored. Instead of “lots of storage”, work out what is going into it. (E.g. measure the vacuum cleaner and the ironing board, think about suitcases, all of the Christmas decorations, bedding, pet food or the giant serving platter you use once a year but cannot part with - guilty.)

Storage becomes so much more useful when it has been designed around actual objects rather than filling an empty wall with some cupboards and hoping for the best.

Check the room with everything open -

This is so important in kitchens.

Your kitchen might have a great walkway when every cupboard is closed and every stool is neatly tucked underneath the island.

Now open the dishwasher. Open the biggest drawer opposite it. Put somebody at the sink, pull a stool out and put a human being on it. Can someone still get past, or are we all doing that awkward little dance around each other? Is the dishwasher smacking someone in the back of the ankle every time they walk past?

It sounds like such a small thing, but these are the things that start to drive you mad when you’re doing them every single day. Do the same in bathrooms, utility rooms and anywhere else where doors, drawers or cabinetry interact and don’t just think about whether everything fits when it’s closed, think about how the room works when you’re using it.

Design for July and for January -

We’ve all been thinking about one thing recently, haven’t we? Air con.

If you’re renovating or building from scratch, think about how your home is going to feel throughout the whole year. Every long winter in the UK, we forget summer eventually comes back around, and then it does and our houses get HOT.

If you’d love air con, think about it now. Concealed or integrated systems can be considered as part of the design rather than adding a unit to the wall afterwards. But think about the simpler things too: cross-ventilation, where the strongest sun will hit, shading and window treatments for summer, then good insulation, underfloor heating, fireplaces and layered lighting for those darker, colder months.

Don’t forget the little things matter too: somewhere for wet coats and muddy boots in winter, doors that make eating outside easy in summer and lighting that still makes the house feel lovely and cosy when it’s dark by four.

Basically, don’t design your home for the season you’re standing in, design it for the year you’re going to live in.

These are just a few things that I’ve learned and, trust me, I have a little black book full of them. A beautiful home is wonderful, but a beautiful home that makes everyday life easier is even better.

You won’t get every decision right, I certainly haven’t. You’ll change your mind, something will inevitably end up somewhere you wish it hadn’t and there will be at least one moment where you stand in the middle of the building site wondering what possessed you to start. That’s just alllllll part of the fun.

But if you’re currently somewhere in the middle of your own renovation, I hope there’s at least one thing here that makes you stop before the plasterboard goes up and think, actually, have we considered that? And if there is, this article has done its job.

If you’re reading this thinking you might need a little help with your own home, you know where to find me. Come and say hello at @whatlillyloves or @lillygunnmallin on Instagram, or you can email the studio at enquiries@whatlillyloves.com

See you Sunday,

Lilly x

Mid-August always feels like a bit of an in-between time to me. I’m still hanging onto summer by my fingernails and refusing to acknowledge anything remotely autumnal. It’s also my birthday this week and once that’s over, I feel like we’re officially on the decline into autumn. Cue my annual heartbreak.

This week I’ve got a lovely sweet treat for you, something I’ve been thinking about for our next home, an update from one of our projects and an Italian ritual I think we could all do with borrowing.

Volume Four. We’re getting somewhere now.

Right, where shall we start?

From the design desk -

This week, the lime plaster went onto the walls of one of our Peak District projects and I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of seeing this material used properly. With an older property, I think there’s a responsibility to understand the building you’re working with instead of replacing everything with modern alternatives. These walls are incredibly thick and need to breathe, so we specified lime for all the practical reasons you’d expect - it’s naturally alkaline, breathable and helps manage moisture within older solid walls, which makes it well suited to buildings like this one. I’d be lying though if I said we chose it purely because of its practical qualities, because it is also stunning.

What I love about lime plaster is that respecting the original fabric of a building doesn’t mean the finished room has to feel traditional. The colour, finish and way it’s used can completely change that and for this project, we’ve kept all of the qualities the building needs while reinterpreting the material in a way that feels much more contemporary and much more suited to our client’s taste. It’ll be left in its natural finish, so all of the variation, movement and depth you can see will become part of the finished room. Once the rest of the materials start going in around it, it’s going to be one of those details that makes the whole room. It feels softer, more organic and warmer than a standard gypsum plaster and paint finish, and if you’re currently working on a characterful property, lime plaster is definitely worth looking into.

Something sweet for Sunday -

My summer tiramisu

If you’re Italian, look away now.

If you’re a fellow tiramisu lover, stay with me on this because this is a really good one. I absolutely love a proper tiramisu, but sometimes I want that same coffee, mascarpone and cocoa hit without it feeling quite so rich afterwards.

I came across the idea of mixing Greek yoghurt with mascarpone and was admittedly sceptical because, let’s face it, “Greek yoghurt tiramisu” doesn’t exactly get the taste buds going. But it actually makes the filling really light and creamy while still tasting like a proper dessert, which is the important bit.

So, for this recipe you’ll need:

• 500g thick full-fat Greek yoghurt (although sometimes I use 0% fat)

• 250g mascarpone

• Honey (as much or as little as you like)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 2–3 strong espressos

• A little sugar

• 1 packet of ladyfingers

• Good cocoa powder

• Dark chocolate (optional)

Mix the Greek yoghurt and mascarpone together with the vanilla until smooth, then add your honey. I’m deliberately not giving you an exact amount because I think this is completely down to taste. For reference, I added a couple of tablespoons to mine, but you might want more or less depending on how sweet you like it. Start with a little, try it and go from there.

Make a couple of really strong espressos and leave them to cool, then add as much or as little sugar as you like. Again, entirely up to you. I keep mine quite strong because I love that real hit of coffee coming through and don’t want the whole thing to be overly sweet.

Quickly dip the ladyfingers into the coffee and arrange them across the bottom of your dish. Add a generous layer of the mascarpone and yoghurt mixture, then repeat with another layer of coffee-soaked ladyfingers and another layer of the creamy mixture.

Finish with a generous dusting of cocoa powder and, if you fancy it, some finely grated dark chocolate, then pop it into the fridge for at least four hours. Overnight is even better, mainly because waking up knowing there’s tiramisu in the fridge is never going to be a bad thing!

Now, I’m not going to tell you this tastes exactly the same as a proper tiramisu, because it doesn’t, and please don’t make it expecting it to. A proper tiramisu is a proper tiramisu and I would never disrespect it like that. This is just my slightly lighter, fresher summer version.

Please, any Italians reading, do not come for me. I know my place.

A little life lately -

You’ll always hear designers say, “never pick your paint colour first!”

Guys, I’m picking my paint colour first. I don’t care. It’s helping.

When I’m designing for clients, I would never begin there. I start with how we want the space to feel, what we’re already working with and what we want to create, then we work out which materials, colours and finishes are going to get us there.

With my own homes though, I’ll admit it, I need to catch a vibe first. I feel like I’m safe to admit that here.

Naturally, I’d plaster every wall if I could, but it feels really wasteful to do that in this house when the walls are perfectly good. So instead, I’m heading straight to Farrow & Ball and Bauwerk and sampling everything. I’ll sample every room, every wall, different light, different times of day - I want to see what these colours actually do in the house before I decide anything.

This time, I want light. I’ve gone much bolder in some of our previous homes. We’ve had entire walls of bespoke black cabinetry, earthy dark brown ceilings and plenty of deeper, moodier colours, but this next house is a traditional stone cottage with very thick walls and small windows, so I want to work with that and not make it feel even darker. I’m looking for colours that have movement and depth, but not so much that the walls become the loudest thing in the room. The general palette in my head at the moment is soft whites, natural taupes and lots and lots of texture.

Will I change my mind twelve times between now and moving in? Oh. It’s a guarantee.

But for now, apparently I’m breaking my own rules and starting with the paint.

A Better Everyday -

Take a passeggiata. (pass-ed-JAH-tah)

The Italians do have a habit of making the ordinary parts of life feel infinitely better, and la passeggiata might be one of my favourites.

It’s basically the ritual of taking a slow, unhurried walk, usually in the early evening, with no real destination - you’re just getting outside, seeing people and watching the world go by. No headphones or distractions and no checking whether you’ve closed your rings (Apple Watch owners will understand the pressure). Just a walk for the sake of going for a walk and twenty minutes is plenty.

Walk through your village or town, go through the park, take the dog and if you’re lucky enough to have a little café within walking distance, stop for a coffee or a drink before wandering home again. Nothing groundbreaking I know, but I think that’s why I like it. I’m very guilty of having a step count as one of my daily targets, so most of my walks end up counting towards something, but it’s so nice to forget all of that and going outside just to see what’s happening.

So this week, take a passeggiata. Even if yours involves abit less Italian sunshine and abit more British drizzle.

And that’s us for another Sunday.

I hope there’s something in here that finds its way into your week, whether you make the tiramisu, finally order those paint samples or take yourself out for a little passeggiata.

And if you do make the tiramisu, please report back. Leave me a comment or send me a DM and tell me how you made yours, anything you changed or, even better, anything you think makes it better. I’m always up for improving a recipe!

I’m off to make the most of the last of the summer, enjoy my birthday week and continue pretending autumn isn’t waiting around the corner. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to tell you by next Sunday.

Thank you for reading, for coming back each week and for making this little Sunday ritual something I already look forward to writing - I really do love having you here.

Have a lovely rest of your Sunday, whatever you’re doing.

See you next week,

Lilly x

This week I hit 100 subscribers here on Substack, which felt like the perfect little milestone to stop and say thank you.

I’m so grateful for every single one of you who reads, comments or sends me a message about something I’ve shared. Honestly, every DM saying you enjoyed a post or that something resonated with you feels like a little hug straight to my heart. It means so much that you choose to spend a little bit of your time here with me.

So, to celebrate 100 of you being here, I thought I’d share 100 things I love.

And considering I have an interior design studio called What Lilly Loves, it feels very fitting really.

Some of these are very specific, but I’m being completely true to myself here, guys.

And obviously, if my husband, family or my two dogs (who are incredibly literate), happen to be reading this, you’re all on the list. I’m sticking to things rather than people because otherwise we could have some serious family politics.

So, in absolutely no particular order…

1. Anything Medik8.

2. Technogym equipment.

3. Yorkshire Tea. Always.

4. Provence.

5. Diptyque satin oil. All Diptyque really.

6. Pain au chocolat (Boulangerie only).

7. Any second spent with our two German Shorthaired Pointers.

8. Lateral raises.

9. Cherries.

10. Cobbled turning circles.

11. Soleil Blanc.

12. Growing our own food.

13. Cypress trees.

14. A really good Caesar salad.

15. Evening walks.

16. Stone pines.

17. Nail files. Everywhere.

18. Weathered copper.

19. A round number at the petrol pump.

20. Fresh white bedding.

21. Removing masking tape cleanly.

22. Skiing.

23. Ice-cold Coke Zero.

24. Mountains from a plane.

25. Extra virgin olive oil.

26. Cancelled plans. Sorry.

27. Bronze steel windows.

28. Beautiful packaging.

29. Starting something new.

30. Taking my shoes off and putting flip-flops on.

31. Cooking.

32. An empty gym.

33. American-sized pickup trucks.

34. Maldon salt.

35. Sitting in the garden with a coffee.

36. Cottage cheese.

37. Crete.

38. Garlic. In everything.

39. Freshly mopped floors.

40. Mediterranean summers.

41. Tiny espressos.

42. A lungo after lunch.

43. Outdoor showers.

44. When the clock says 11:11.

45. Seeing 11, 111 or 1111.

46. White 100% cotton T-shirts.

47. Lululemon.

48. Hotel breakfasts.

49. French supermarkets.

50. Completely clear worktops.

51. Big gates.

52. Heavy glassware.

53. Zalto glasses.

54. Monogrammed wash bags and pillowcases.

55. People with good manners.

56. Dinner at 6pm. 😂

57. Being home by 8pm.

58. When someone else suggests leaving early.

59. Push day.

60. Rosso Levanto.

61. When a client gets it straight away.

62. New carpet smell.

63. Fresh paint smell.

64. The smell of wood being cut.

65. Open fires. The smell also.

66. Sea salt spray.

67. The first fire of autumn.

68. A Christmas Day walk.

69. A good shoulder pump.

70. Autumn in Maussane-les-Alpilles.

71. Spring water only.

72. An empty dishwasher.

73. A full fridge.

74. Fresh dill.

75. Dogs snoring.

76. When my dogs actually come back when I call them.

77. Animals. All of them.

78. Writing everything in a paper diary.

79. Anything pistachio flavoured.

80. Seagrass, raffia, cane, rattan.

81. Woven anything, to be honest.

82. Olive oil soap.

83. Taking your makeup off.

84. When the lights turn green just as you drive up to them.

85. Waking up to sunshine.

86. Bare feet on stone floors.

87. Crispy potatoes.

88. When it feels like 2pm and it’s only 11am.

89. Crunchy gravel under tyres.

90. Communicating in builder jargon.

91. Finding a better way of doing something.

92. Greek food.

93. Paros.

94. The restaurant table tucked in the corner.

95. Freshly squeezed orange juice.

96. A really good pen.

97. A freezing cold car on a hot morning.

98. Pantries.

99. A vision board.

100. The first 100 of you here. 🤍

If you made it this far, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for reading all 100 of my very random loves. 🤍

I’d love to know which ones you love too, and even more, what would make your list that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know!

Thank you so much for being here, and I’ll see you on Sunday for the fourth edition of The Slow Sunday Edit.

Lilly x

We’re already on volume three, which has gone much quicker than I expected. Three weeks in and I already can’t wait to get to Volume 100 and there’s no reason for that other than the fact I think it’ll feel like quite an achievement.

So, let’s begin shall we?

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Straight onto this week’s table -

Roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic and honey whipped ricotta and toasted sourdough.

I have a summer tradition of buying (and growing, although I have literally harvested five so far) too many tomatoes and then wondering what to do with them and now this recipe has become the answer.

Slow roast them until they're sweet, then spoon them over whipped ricotta blended with roasted garlic, a spoonful of honey and a pinch of sea salt. Finish with fresh basil and good quality extra virgin olive oil, then eat the whole thing outside if the weather gives you half a chance. I love how the simplest food ends up becoming the one you make over and over again.

If you’re having people over, make this.

If you’re not having people over, make it anyway.

Something I’m really excited about -

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know I’m hopeless at keeping exciting things to myself. It’s a terrible trait when birthdays, Christmas or surprise presents are involved.

Over the last eight years, Sean (my husband) and I have renovated six of our own homes. Some have been complete back-to-brick renovations, others have involved reconfiguring layouts and lots of joyous building work and every single one has come with countless days and weekends of hard graft, faces covered in dust and wondering why we’d decided to do it all over again.

And now, we’re about to start number seven.

This one is a little different though. It isn’t a full structural renovation, which is probably why I’m looking forward to documenting it so much. It’s the sort of project so many people actually have: a home with good bones that simply needs rethinking. Different flow, different decisions and a completely different feeling by the end of it.

Something I don’t think I’ve shared is just how much those six renovations have shaped the way I design today. Long before What Lilly Loves existed, I was living through renovations myself, making expensive mistakes, changing my mind halfway through and learning what was genuinely worth investing in. Every one of those lessons has found its way into the way I now design for clients.

Client projects will always live over at What Lilly Loves, but this one feels like the right opportunity to share more of the thinking behind it all over on @lillygunnmallin. And not the polished reveal, the process - the mood boards that change five times (daily lol), samples spread across the dining table, flooring decisions I’ll probably overthink and all the little choices that shape a home.

We’re a little way off getting the keys, so for now it’s all planning, collecting ideas and making many tiny decisions before a single paintbrush comes out. That’s always been my favourite part, and I’ll bring you along for every single one of them.

From the design desk -

Table lamps. Not just on side tables, but almost anywhere.

I love the idea of seeing them in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect: on a kitchen island instead of a pendant, down the centre of a kitchen or dining table (wireless lamps are perfect for this), they instantly make the whole room feel less formal. Even on a long run of kitchen worktop, where they soften all the hard surfaces and it has the space to become part of the room rather than just another accessory.

The only thing that really matters is proportion - a little lamp squeezed underneath the kitchen wall units or pushed awkwardly into the corner of a worktop never looks the same or does the same job. Give it a little breathing space and it becomes part of the room and not something that’s been added to it. If you’re thinking of trying it, I’d choose something with a bit of substance - ceramic, stone or aged metal always sit more comfortably than anything too delicate. It should feel like it belongs there, not like it’s been borrowed from the bedside tables.

It’s a really small detail, but come six o’clock the whole room softens.

A Better Everyday -

Start your own family cookbook.

The other day I was making banana bread and wondered whether I actually owned a cookbook with the recipe in it. Instead though, like everyone else, I reached for my phone, typed “banana bread recipe” into Google, found one and scrolled past ten adverts before I’d even weighed a single gram of flour. It was delicious, but it made me wonder where the days had gone when every kitchen seemed to have shelves full of proper cookbooks and baking books.

Last Saturday, I found a beautiful old Italian cookbook at an antiques fair and, a few years before that, I picked up a tiny book called Recipes from Provence, both books are filled with simple recipes that have clearly been cooked hundreds of times before. Nothing in either is complex and there’s no endless shopping list of ingredients you’ll use once and never buy again, just dishes built around whatever happened to be in season. I’m no chef, just someone who genuinely loves cooking, especially recipes that are straightforward and the ingredients are simple. It feels quite wholesome making a meal that hasn’t changed in generations.

It also inspired me to start something of my own. I bought a plain notebook and every time I make something I think is worth making again, I write it down. Sometimes it’s a recipe from one of those old books or it’s something I’ve made up or it’s a recipe I’ve stolen from my mum, but I love the thought that one day it’ll be stained with fingerprints and olive oil, the pages will be folded over, there’ll be little notes in the margins saying “more lemon next time” or “Sean loved this one”, and it’ll tell the story of our kitchen better than any app ever could.

I have a feeling we’ll all find our way back to proper cookbooks one day or perhaps, even better, we’ll start writing our own.

This week’s question -

What’s one thing in your home that you’d never part with?

I don’t mean because it might have been expensive, just the things that every time you look at it, it reminds you of somewhere, someone or a particular moment in your life.

I always think those pieces end up becoming the most beautiful.

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Until next Sunday,

Lilly x

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I know what you’re thinking..

.. In the Peak District?

Exactly! In the Peak District.

When I say the word Mediterranean, you might be picturing white villas, sea views and endless summers, then wonder why somebody living in one of the coldest, wettest and windiest parts of Britain would choose to build an entire interior design studio around it. But the answer isn’t the sunshine, although I certainly wouldn’t complain if we had a little more of it - it’s the feeling.

For me, there isn’t just one version of Mediterranean design and it’s not one obvious look. It’s incredibly diverse, every region has its own architecture, materials and way of living, that’s exactly why I love it so much. The version you’ll find at What Lilly Loves, though, is my own interpretation of that world - it’s calm, understated and soft. It’s craftsmanship, beautiful textures and homes that feel warm - it’s materials like wood, plaster and stone lovingly sitting alongside each other, creating rooms that feel restorative and soothing. You know those places where you sit down and everything just feels calm? That’s the feeling and the philosophy behind everything I design.

When I started What Lilly Loves, I never wanted to design every style for every client, and I still don’t.

I want to dedicate the studio to one very clear way of thinking about home and living and as far as I’m aware, we’re the only interior design studio in the UK dedicated entirely to reinterpreting modern Mediterranean design for British homes, and that’s something I’m incredibly proud of.

This philosophy doesn’t belong to one coastline or one climate either, I believe it belongs anywhere people want a home that feels calm, soft and natural. It seems we’ve done Mediterranean interiors a disservice by treating them as something that only works in the height of summer because, honestly, I think they come into their own during the darker months of the year.. a freezing January evening when the fire is glowing, woven lamps are casting the softest light across the room and the whole house seems to wrap itself around you. Then think about an August morning with the windows open, a cool stone floor beneath your feet, a gentle breeze moving through the house and everything feeling light, calm and unhurried. To me, a great Mediterranean home should be able to do both with equal ease.

British interior design has no shortage of talented studios, and there are so many whose work I respect and admire, but my ambition has never been to do what already exists with a slightly different colour palette. My ambition is to build Britain’s home for modern Mediterranean interiors, reinterpreting that design language for the way we live here and proving that warmth, calm and natural living feel just as at home beneath a grey Peak District sky as they do beside the sea.

If you’ve read this and thought.. I don’t really get it - that’s completely okay. No design studio should be everything to everyone.

But if you’ve read this and understood the feeling I’ve been trying to describe, then we’d get on so well - that is exactly the kind of home we’re creating every single day at What Lilly Loves.

My mission is simple - I want to bring more calm, more ease and a little more Mediterranean thinking into our homes and I can’t think of a better place to start than the windy, rainy, cold old Peak District.

Thank you so much for reading.

If this resonated with you, I’d love to have you here for the next one.

You can follow our studio on Instagram at @whatlillyloves, where we share our latest projects, behind the scenes, inspiration and the design philosophy that shapes everything we create.

Until next time,

Lilly x

I’m currently writing this on Saturday evening, trying to convince myself that one more cup of coffee at 9pm isn’t a terrible idea. But you know what? This is fresh off the press.

I still don’t quite know what The Slow Sunday Edit will become, and I quite like that. Think of it as a little collection of things that have caught my eye and been on my mind throughout the week. Sometimes it’ll be a recipe I’ve made, sometimes a product I genuinely think everybody should own. Other weeks it might be a design thought I can’t shake, a small change I’ve made at home, or something I’ve learnt while working on a client’s project that I think is too good not to share, and I promise not to gatekeep anything here.

Whatever it is, I hope there’s always something here that inspires you to slow down, try something new, or simply notice the little things a bit more.

So, here’s what’s been living rent-free in my mind this week.

Things I’ve Romanticised This Week

This week, it’s been the greenhouse.

If you’ve been following along on Instagram (@lillygunnmallin), you’ll know we’ve had quite the cucumber situation. They’re currently growing at an aggressive rate, and every time I open the greenhouse door, there’s another one the size of my forearm waiting for me. At this rate, I’ll be leaving them on neighbours’ doorsteps under the cover of darkness.

But honestly, growing your own food is one of those things that’s brought me an unexpected amount of joy. There’s something incredibly satisfying about picking tomatoes that you’ve watched ripen for weeks, even if this week’s grand harvest consisted of two tiny tomatoes... both of which I ate before I’d even made it back to the house.

If you’ve never grown anything before, start small. A pot of basil on a windowsill. Mint. Chives. Even a couple of carrot seeds in an old bucket.

It isn’t really about saving money, it’s about the satisfaction of eating something you grew yourself.

This Week’s Find

This week’s find is this beautiful rug from Nordic Knots.

I came across it completely by accident while looking for something entirely different, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

This isn’t an advert. They’re not paying me. I don’t even own it. I just think it’s one of those pieces that’s so beautiful that I couldn’t keep it to myself. If anyone buys it before I do, I have one request... please tell me what it’s like. I need to know if it’s as good in real life as it looks online.

And if you’re reading this because you’re thinking about working together on your home and you’ve immediately fallen in love with it too... I have a feeling we’d get on very well.

My 1% This Week

I’m a big believer that the biggest changes don’t happen overnight. They come from lots of tiny decisions that compound over time. So this week, my one percent has been reducing the amount of plastic we bring into our home.

Before you yawn and skip ahead, hear me out.

I watched a documentary about microplastics and, naturally, disappeared down a little rabbit hole. Now, I’m not aiming for perfection here, but it did make me think more carefully about the small choices we make every day. If microplastics are something you’ve been thinking about, or you simply want to be a little more mindful of how much plastic you’re bringing into your home, here are a few really easy swaps.

Swap plastic chopping boards for wooden ones. Gradually replace non-stick pans with stainless steel or copper cookware. Choose loose fruit and vegetables over pre-packaged versions where you can, and store leftovers and food items in glass containers instead of plastic ones.

None of these changes are about being perfect. They’re just small, everyday decisions that over time can make a real difference.

A Recipe You Must Try

For the longest time, I was convinced bread was far too complicated.

A few years ago, I attempted sourdough, and let’s just say it wasn’t my finest moment. My starter seemed to spend more time overflowing onto the kitchen worktop than it did making decent bread, and the whole thing felt far more stressful than satisfying.

Fast forward a few years, and I’ve finally found the recipe that changed my mind.

I shared it over on Instagram (@lillygunnmallin), and honestly, it’s become one of those recipes I make on repeat. There’s no kneading, no complicated technique, and no sourdough starter to keep alive. I simply mix it together, leave it in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours (the longer it sits, the better the flavour), let it come to room temperature for a couple of hours, then bake it in a hot Dutch oven.

The result is everything you want from a loaf of bread. Crisp, golden, flavourful, and with that slightly chewy texture you’d expect from a proper sourdough.

It didn’t even survive one meal in our house.

If you’re someone who’s always thought homemade bread looked too difficult, let this be your sign to give it a go. I have a feeling it’ll become one of those recipes you come back to again and again.

If you make it, I’d love to know what you think.

Thanks so much for spending a little part of your Sunday with me, or whatever day you’ve found yourself reading this.

If you try the bread, buy this week’s find, or simply do something that brings you joy this week, I’d genuinely love to hear about it. One of my favourite parts of writing here is reading your messages and hearing what’s been inspiring you too.

Have the loveliest week, and I’ll see you next Sunday.

LGM 🤍

If you’ve ever worked with me, you’ll almost certainly have heard me say, “Buy cheap, buy twice.”

In fact, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Hang on... she’s never said that to me,” then trust me, your time is coming.

Alongside “quality is remembered long after price is forgotten,” it’s probably one of my favourite sayings, and one that seems to make an appearance in almost every project.

But what do I actually mean by it? Surely spending less means saving money... doesn’t it? Not always. In fact, I’d argue that one of the most expensive mistakes we make is focusing on the price tag instead of the true cost.

As an interior designer, I spend a huge amount of time helping clients decide where to invest their budget, and contrary to what some people might think, I don’t automatically recommend the most expensive option. There are plenty of products where you’re simply paying for a name, and I’ll happily tell a client to save their money if I don’t think the difference is justified. However, there are certain decisions where I will almost always encourage people to spend a little more because, over and over again, I’ve seen the cheaper option end up costing far more in the long run.

Take paint, for example.

Have you ever bought the tin that’s on offer because it felt like a bargain, only to discover the consistency is somewhere between milk and disappointment?

You start painting. The wall underneath still shows through.

Second coat. Still patchy.

Third coat. Almost there.

By the time you’ve bought another tin, spent an entire weekend painting and are still left with a finish that marks every time somebody brushes past it, that bargain suddenly doesn’t feel quite so clever.

Now compare that with a premium paint. The coverage is exceptional, the finish has real depth, the colour feels richer, the surface is beautifully chalky and matt, and in many cases you’re finished after two coats. Better still, modern premium paints are often far more durable, resisting scuffs, wiping clean with ease and looking just as beautiful years later as they did the day they were applied.

Yes, it cost more. But your mental health is surely worth more than painting white on white five times over and still wondering why it’s patchy.

Furniture is another perfect example. A cheap dining chair often looks wonderful on the day it arrives in your space. Twelve months later, the cushions have lost their shape, the fabric has bobbled, the joints have started to loosen, a zip has given up entirely, and you’re already thinking about replacing it.

Meanwhile, a beautifully made chair with a solid timber frame, quality upholstery and proper craftsmanship gets on with its job for years. It doesn’t need replacing because it was built with the expectation that somebody would still be sitting on it a decade later.

The same conversation comes up when comparing natural materials with synthetic alternatives - solid oak instead of printed veneer, natural fibres instead of polyester, wool instead of acrylic or solid metals instead of plated finishes.

Natural materials don’t just look different - they behave differently. They develop character and patina, and become even more lovely with use and time, scratches become part of their story rather than the beginning of their decline. Many synthetic alternatives do the opposite. They start by looking convincing but reveal themselves over time when the edges chip, finishes peel, veneers lift, laminates swell and fabrics lose their texture. What originally felt like a saving ends up being something that needs replacing far sooner than expected.

We’ve become so accustomed to buying furniture that’s expected to last a handful of years that we’ve almost forgotten it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when people bought a dining table knowing it would host decades of birthdays and Sunday lunches. A sideboard was passed down, not put on Facebook Marketplace after eighteen months because it no longer matched the latest trend. I’m not saying every piece in your home needs to become a family heirloom, nor am I suggesting the most expensive option is always the right one. What I am suggesting is that we stop asking, “What’s the cheapest?” and start asking, “What’s going to serve me best over the next ten or twenty years?”

Occasionally, the answer might be the more affordable option but, more often than not, spending a little more at the beginning saves an awful lot of frustration, replacement, waste and disappointment later on.

“Buy cheap, buy twice.”

I don’t think cheap is always a bargain, or that expensive is always the answer. What I do believe is that value and price are two very different things. The best purchases are the ones that still make you smile, still do their job and still earn their place years after you’ve forgotten what you paid for them.

LGM

So, pop the kettle on, settle in, and welcome to this week’s Slow Sunday Edit.

What’s inspiring a current project

One of our current projects, a beautiful newly built home in South Yorkshire, has sent me down a rabbit hole of timeless French architecture.

We’ve been saving image after image of thick limestone walls, aged timber doors and enormous reclaimed stone fireplace lintels that become the heart of a room. The wonderful thing about French homes are that they never feel contrived, they’re elegant without being precious, layered without feeling busy and full of character.

That’s exactly the feeling we’re trying to create - a home that feels charming, where modern living sits comfortably alongside old-world character.

What’s been on repeat

Three.

Yes... three panzanella salads this week.

If you’ve already discovered one, you’ll know exactly why. If not, make this your sign.

Mine has become a bit of an obsession if you can’t tell. Toasted chunks of sourdough, colourful heritage tomatoes, wafer-thin red onion, Kalamata olives and generous handfuls of torn basil.

The dressing couldn’t be simpler: really good extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, flaky sea salt, cracked black pepper, a little honey and one or two grated garlic cloves.

Then, and trust me it’s worth it, finish it with ripe peaches and a generous ball of burrata. Wow. It’s everything I want summer to taste like.

Colour of the week

Ibiza by Bauwerk.

Soft, chalky and sun-washed. It’s one of those colours that shifts throughout the day and manages to feel both warm and calming at the same time. Colour drenched it is absolutely wonderful.

One thing I’m obsessing over

Can I choose two?

Unlacquered brass fixtures and reclaimed elm.

There’s an honesty to both of them that I love, they don’t need embellishment and they age like fine wine.

I’ve had a soft spot for reclaimed elm for ages. The worn grain and the little imperfections are what make it so special, every piece feels as though it’s lived another life before finding its way into yours. For the past couple of months, we’ve been sourcing pieces for a bathroom renovation and I’ve been searching high and low for the perfect reclaimed elm sideboard to turn into a bespoke vanity. I had a very specific piece in mind, which meant I obviously wasn’t willing to settle.

Then, this week, we found it. I already know it’s going to become the heart of the space.

Currently loving

One of my favourite parts of the day lately has been after dinner. My husband and I have accidentally started a little tradition where we choose one completely random topic and spend half an hour learning everything we can about it. So far we’ve gone down rabbit holes on coffee, olives, honey, Ancient Greece and cheese to name a few, and I genuinely look forward to it every evening. It’s reminded me how enjoyable it is to be curious for no reason at all.

If you’ve got a wonderfully random subject we should dive into next, leave me a suggestion. I have a feeling this little tradition is here to stay.

The scent of the week

Maison Margiela Bubble Bath.

This perfume has sat on my bedside table ever since our wedding almost three years ago. I don’t wear it very often, which makes it even more special. I reached for it a few times this week and, just like that, I was transported back. It’s funny how a scent can do that. One spray and you’re standing in a completely different moment in your life.

It’s fresh, powdery and clean, and writing this has made me realise that every fragrance I own has something in common. I always gravitate towards scents that remind me of freshly laundered bed linen or stepping out of a long shower. Clean, comforting and familiar. Those will always be my favourites.

This week’s reminder

Buy the good olive oil. Use your favourite plates on an ordinary Tuesday. Light the expensive candle you’ve been waiting for the “right moment” to burn. Wear the perfume. Open the bottle you’ve been saving.

Life has a funny way of convincing us that best things should be reserved for birthdays, dinner parties and special occasions. But there doesn’t need to be a celebration or guests, or even a reason.

The little things only become special if we allow ourselves to enjoy them.

Being alive is the occasion.

Until next Sunday,

LGM

Too intense. Too particular. Too driven. Too organised. Too fussy. Too ambitious. Too serious. The list goes on.

At some point, we all started wondering whether we should soften those parts of ourselves. Be a little more relaxed, lower the bar, or care a little less.

But they’re just standards we put on ourselves, not standards for anyone else.

High standards aren’t about expecting perfection - they’re about refusing to cut corners, even when nobody would ever know the difference. They’re about keeping promises to yourself long after the excitement has worn off and about doing things properly because your name is attached to them, whether anyone notices or not.

And those standards don’t stay in one part of your life - they find their way into everything.

You become the person who would rather say, “I don’t know,” than pretend they do. The person who would rather underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around and the person who would rather miss an opportunity than compromise the values they built everything on. Because you couldn’t live comfortably with yourself if you did otherwise.

A lot of people also misunderstand high standards - they assume they’re aimed outwards or that you’re judging them. And that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

The people with the highest standards are usually their own toughest critics - they aren’t expecting everyone else to live the way they do. They’re just trying to become the person they know they’re capable of being.

With time, I’ve stopped apologising for caring. I care about how I treat people, about keeping my word, about creating work I’m proud of. I care about leaving things better than I found them, and I care about the little details. And yes, sometimes (always) that means I take longer, and it probably means saying no when yes would be easier or doing work that nobody will ever see because I know it matters. But I’ve made peace with that because I’ve realised something - that every life is built on a thousand tiny decisions that nobody applauds. The conversation where you choose honesty over convenience. The task you finish properly instead of “good enough.” The corner you refuse to cut, even though nobody would ever know.

Those decisions become your character.

So if you’ve ever been told you’re too much, the answer isn’t to become less. The answer is to stop apologising for having standards in a world that rewards shortcuts.

The right people won’t ask you to lower them. They’ll recognise them.

And they’ll trust you because of them.

So keep raising them.

Love,

LGM

How do I make my new build feel older?

Or more accurately:

How do I make my home feel as though it has more character than it does?

It’s such a good question because I don’t actually think what people are searching for is age. What they’re searching for is character, personality, depth and that elusive feeling that a home has a story to tell. Older properties have a habit of doing this effortlessly. They arrive with history already woven into their walls. Uneven plaster, quirky layouts and architectural details collected over decades (sometimes centuries) all contribute towards that feeling that a home has evolved over time. Of course, period properties are undeniably beautiful, but new homes are becoming increasingly popular for very good reason - they’re practical, efficient, warm, easy to maintain and offer exactly the blank canvas many people are looking for. What they can occasionally lack, however, is a sense of identity, but the good news is that identity can be created.

The first place I would always start is with architectural detail. That might mean introducing wall mouldings, ceiling details, considered joinery or perhaps an arch where it feels appropriate within the architecture of the home. Architectural elements create a sense of permanence and almost instantly make a property feel as though it has evolved. The important thing here, however, is restraint and intentionality. One beautiful arch can feel timeless, but twelve arches can begin to feel slightly theatrical.

The next thing I would look at is materiality. Homes with character are never just one material, there are many components blended to create a sense of character. Classic combos include wood alongside stone, softer fabrics against harder surfaces, aged metals sitting comfortably beside natural fibres and layers of texture throughout a space. All of these different textures help create the feeling that a home has been assembled over time rather than delivered in boxes on the same afternoon.

Patina is your friend. Choose materials that only look better with age. Unlacquered brass, solid woods and natural fabrics tend to soften and settle into a home over time. An old beaten wooden table often has far more character than a perfect one.

A little side note here, and perhaps one of the things Provence does better than almost anywhere else. I can remember standing in a house in the South of France that I was absolutely convinced had been there for generations. The stone looked weathered by decades of summer sun, the shutters felt as though they had been opened every morning for fifty years and the gardens seemed to have settled themselves into the landscape over time.

And then I was told that the house was two years old.

What the owners understood so brilliantly was that whilst the building itself was new, almost every material within it felt older than the house it belonged to. The stone had been selected because it carried variation and age. The finishes celebrated texture over perfection and nothing felt new, shiny or pristine. By the time the planting had matured and the climbing roses had found their way across the walls, the house looked as though it had belonged there forever. It’s something you see across Provence and across the Balearics too. The architecture itself may be contemporary, but the materials tell an older story.

I think that’s the secret: to choose materials that are older than your house is.

If every piece of furniture arrives from the same retailer on the same delivery van, your home will inevitably feel new. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with buying new furniture, but the secret to adding that charm and character is to collect and mix materials and finishes. So experiment with materials and mix your metals. Pair contemporary pieces with antiques, vintage finds and objects collected from travels, markets and weekends away. Invest in craftsmanship and joinery where you can. Introduce texture, variation and pieces that feel as though they’ve lived another life already. Allow your home to evolve rather than expecting it to arrive fully formed.

Character is not created in a single shopping trip, unless you’re in a Paris brocante.

Ultimately, making a new build feel one hundred years older isn’t really about making it look old at all, but creating warmth, permanence and personality. It’s about making a home feel as though it has grown around the people who live there.

The goal was never age. It was character all along.

And that, friends, is your sign to go to your local antiques market and buy the things you absolutely love, and if you can’t fit it in your car, congratulations, you’ve probably bought the right thing.

LGM

As I write this, it’s 28 degrees in the Peak District. The sky is impossibly blue, the windows are firmly shut to keep the heat out, and for a few fleeting days England is pretending to be somewhere further south. And yet, despite all of the sunshine, my mind keeps wandering back to Provence.

Since sharing my recent piece on what inspires What Lilly Loves, and talking a little more about my love affair with that corner of France, I’ve had many lovely messages asking where we stay and what I would recommend if someone was visiting for the first time. As somebody who returns almost religiously every summer, I feel as though it’s become my responsibility to share a few of the places that hold a permanent little claim on my heart.

Alexa, play Les rues de Paris on Spotify. We’re going to be here a while.

Whilst there are countless places to explore within Provence, from the Luberon villages of Gordes, Roussillon, Lacoste and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to name just a few, I have a particularly big love for the Alpilles.

So whether you’re planning your first trip there, building an itinerary or simply fancy a little read with a coffee, I hope these very rough and ready notes give you a little more insight into one of my favourite places on planet earth and yes, that includes Starbucks.

For those planning a trip, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is always where I would tell you to start. It has just enough energy without ever feeling crowded and its Wednesday market is wonderful - the stalls spill through the streets, cafés stretch into the squares and every corner seems to contain a doorway more beautiful than the last. And if you’re anything like me, your camera roll will quickly become full of gates, shutters and market produce that are quite obviously the prettiest things you’ve ever seen until you walk another twenty metres and find something even prettier. Although a car is pretty essential when travelling around the many villages of Provence, I would highly recommend staying within walking distance of Saint-Rémy. Whilst there are car parks, they fill up quickly and there is something lovely about walking into town in the morning and wandering home again later in the day. Saint-Rémy also makes a brilliant base to explore from. You’re central to the Parc naturel régional des Alpilles, a beautiful protected landscape with some incredible walks, and within fifteen minutes of gorgeous villages such as Eygalières, Maussane-les-Alpilles, Les Baux-de-Provence and Paradou.

Maussane-les-Alpilles in particular is especially close to my heart and feels home-like to me. It has a wonderful market every Thursday morning, a beautiful square to enjoy a coffee afterwards and, perhaps most importantly, some very dangerous homeware shops.

One of the best things about Provence is just how vast it is and how many places there are to discover. One is the beautiful historic city of Aix-en-Provence, full of incredible shops, a huge market and only around thirty to forty minutes from Marseille depending on exactly where you’re coming from.

My main advice in Provence? Spend an afternoon driving without much of a plan. Stop when you see a market and buy the nectarines, order the rosé and wander into little homeware shops and convince yourself you absolutely need another olive wood board to bring home. Do that and I can almost guarantee you’ve just had a wonderful day.

Provence, to me, is almost indescribable. It isn’t just somewhere I visit, it’s somewhere that has shaped the way I design, the way I entertain, the way I think about home and even the way I want to live. The feeling you get there, the smells of cypress and the thyme, the sound of cutlery being laid on a table nearby, the condensation running down a bottle of Provençal rosé in the late afternoon sun and, despite not even drinking alcohol, I could quite happily murder a glass just writing this.

And that’s my thoughts on a place I could quite happily talk about all day every day, condensed into a two minute read so we can all get on with our day.

If you’ve read this and you’re suddenly considering a flight to Marseille, I completely understand.

Just let me know when you’re booking it and I’ll happily squeeze into your suitcase.

LGM

Last year, according to the Office for National Statistics, we Brits spent almost £79 billion travelling abroad.

£79 billion on flights to Spain, trips to Portugal, villas in Greece, long breaks in Italy and that kind of joy that only seems to appear with your first coffee in the sunshine.

Every summer we do exactly the same thing - we spend months searching for somewhere that promises a slower pace of life, saving whitewashed villas, boutique hotels and restored farmhouses, only to arrive a few months later and discover that within forty-eight hours we’re sleeping better, scrolling less, spending more time outside and becoming versions of ourselves that feel easier to live with.

And really, holiday homes aren’t always perfect. The kitchens might be smaller than ours and the wardrobes accommodate two weeks of clothes despite being the size of our spice cupboard back at home, yet despite having less space, fewer possessions and none of the conveniences we’ve told ourselves are essential, most of us feel calmer there than we do in homes that are three times the size and filled with infinitely more stuff. Is that coincidental? I’m not convinced.

The holiday feeling, at least according to my entirely unofficial definition of it, is the feeling of ease, calm, space and quietness that arrives around the second morning when your shoulders drop, your brain stops spinning like a washing machine and the simple act of sitting down outside suddenly feels like an reasonable use of forty minutes. Some of that feeling undoubtedly comes from sunshine and some of it comes from having nowhere important to be, but environmental psychologists have spent decades proving that our surroundings influence stress, mood, concentration, sleep quality and behaviour far more than most of us realise, which means the places we inhabit are shaping the way we live whether we’ve designed them intentionally or not.

For example, a cluttered environment increases cognitive load. Natural light influences circadian rhythms and energy levels. Layouts influence movement, habits and behaviour. Our homes are not passive backdrops to our lives, they are active participants in them. Maybe that’s why holiday homes and beautiful hotels can feel so restorative, because they contain less visual noise, fewer decisions, a stronger connection to the outside world and materials that feel honest and grounding rather than synthetic and temporary. Natural materials carry warmth, texture and imperfection and in many ways explain why so many of us return from places determined to recreate the feeling at home, usually beginning with an olive tree and ending somewhere around an emotional attachment to travertine.

What I love as a designer isn’t how to make a house look Mediterranean, it’s how to make life feel easier inside it. I want enough storage that daily life can disappear from view when it needs to and enough simplicity that a room feels restful, not demanding. Layouts that support routines, materials that ground us and spaces that feel cool and airy in July but manage to feel just as comforting in November when it’s dark by half past four and everybody develops a dependency on soup and stew. Our homes have to perform in all seasons and for all versions of ourselves, not just the optimistic summer version, but also the February version that’s cold, tired and wondering whether winter might actually be permanent this year.

So to conclude, is that the thing we’re really spending £79 billion searching for every year? Not just the destination itself, but the feeling we become convinced only exists once we’ve left home. Personally, I think that’s far too expensive a feeling to experience for only two weeks a year.

Love

LGM

Now, before anyone rushes to the comments, of course you can buy luxury. A beautifully veined marble worktop is a luxury. Handcrafted cabinetry is a luxury. Solid timber, natural stone and exceptional craftsmanship are all luxuries in their own right.

But stay with me.

Somehow, luxury became a checklist. Designer taps, a wine wall, seven bedrooms, porcelain floors polished to within an inch of their life and the sort of dressing room that could comfortably house a small boutique.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. In fact, I’d happily specify most of it. I just don’t think that’s where luxury ends.

To our little studio, luxury is designing a home so thoughtfully around the people who live there that everyday life feels beautifully easy, or at the very least, a little easier than it did before.

Luxury is a coffee station that makes your morning ritual feel effortless because everything is exactly where your hand reaches for it.

Luxury is a rainhead shower that completely cocoons you rather than one that looks great but delivers all the enthusiasm of someone watering the garden with their thumb over the end of the hose.

Luxury is climbing into flax linen sheets that keep you cool on warm nights and cosy on cold ones.

Luxury is having somewhere to enjoy your first coffee while the morning light moves across the room, before emails, meetings and notifications have had the chance to make demands of you.

Luxury is opening a cupboard and knowing your life can completely disappear behind it in seconds, leaving your home feeling calm instead of asking your brain to process another dozen things before breakfast.

I think luxury isn’t about adding more, it’s about removing what gets in the way. Visual noise, daily frustrations and the tiny moments of friction that steal our time, attention and energy.

I appreciate that’s probably a slightly controversial opinion in a world that constantly encourages us to buy more, upgrade more and fill every empty shelf with something, but I can’t help wondering whether real luxury is wanting less because you’ve simply chosen better.

It’s interesting because when people first come to us, it’s rare they tell us they want a calm home. They tell us they want a bigger kitchen, more storage, a better bathroom or a beautiful living room for entertaining.

Yet as the conversation unfolds and we keep asking questions, what they’re really describing isn’t a collection of rooms at all. They’re describing a feeling.

A home that feels calmer, more organised, comfortable and restorative.

That’s the new luxury.

Not just a beautiful home, but one that gives something back to you every single day.

Those are my Sunday thoughts, anyway.

I’d genuinely love to know what luxury means to you in your home. Is it a room, a ritual, a feeling, or perhaps something completely different? I always love reading your thoughts because everyone defines luxury a little differently, and I think that’s what makes it so interesting.

Have a wonderful Sunday,

Thank you for spending a few minutes with me, and I’ll see you on the next one.

LGM

Before June disappears completely, I wanted to write down a few things that made it feel like June.

So, over a coffee and a longer think than was probably necessary, I started making note of some of the things I loved about June 2026. Some are meaningful, others completely ordinary and a few will only make sense if you also get disproportionately excited by gardens, good weather and ripe fruit. In no particular order, here are a few things that brought me joy this month.

• Eating our entire strawberry crop within the space of three minutes and realising that if I want enough to sustain me more than a day, I’m probably going to need another hundred plants.

• Seeing tomato flowers slowly turn into actual tomatoes, and the smell that hits you when you open the greenhouse door on a warm afternoon.

• Living in linen.

• Opening every window in the house only to let the full cast of Bugs Life in.

• Hanging washing outside and having it dry in what feels like minutes.

• Feeling like a human lizard every time the sun comes out.

• The first nectarine of the year that actually tasted like a nectarine.

• A perfectly crisp Coke Zero.

• Seeing months of planning finally begin on site.

• A client saying, “This is better than I could ever have imagined.” and having a tear in my eye. For once, I couldn't blame hayfever.

• Watching the dogs move around the garden following patches of dappled shade.

• Breakfast outside.

• Dinner outside.

• Pretty much anything outside, now I think about it.

• Seeing figs, peaches and cherries back in season.

• Ending the evening barefoot on the lawn, watering the garden in fresh pyjamas.

• Early mornings and long evenings that make the day feel twice as long in the best possible way.

• Remembering that some of the best things in life are free.

• Realising that some of my favourite moments this month cost absolutely nothing.

And that’s June.

A month of strawberries, sunshine, wonderful clients, ripening tomatoes and a level of enthusiasm for warm weather that suggests I may have been a reptile in a previous life.

I’d love to know, what brought you joy this June? What will you remember most? The big things, the small things and everything in between.

For now though, I’m off. My 1,225-day Duolingo streak in Italian isn’t going to maintain itself.

Ciao. 🇮🇹

LGM

If somebody handed me £100,000 and told me I could only spend it on improving my wellbeing at home, I wouldn’t buy a cold plunge, a red light panel or any of the other gadgets currently dominating my Instagram feed.

I’d buy a mattress.

And before you click away thinking this is about to become the least exciting wellness article ever written, hear me out.

Mattresses don’t make particularly compelling content. Nobody is rushing to post theirs on Instagram and I can’t say I’ve ever been invited to somebody’s house and been told, “Wait until you see what we’ve done with the mattress.” But when you consider that we spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, investing in the quality of that sleep suddenly feels far more interesting than another supplement subscription arriving through the letterbox.

As an interior designer with a borderline unhealthy interest in wellness, sleep, recovery and all things longevity, I'm fascinated by the way our homes influence how we feel every single day, although perhaps not in the way it’s often presented online.

When I think about wellness, I don’t immediately think about protein powders or waking up at 4:30am to sit in an ice bath whilst listening to a Huberman podcast (Andrew, if by some miracle you ever read this, I love your work).

I think about energy. Recovery. Longevity. Feeling strong. Sleeping well. Feeling good.

And the deeper I’ve gone down that rabbit hole, I’m completely convinced that our homes play a far bigger role in all of this than we give them credit for.

Think about it, we’ll happily spend hundreds of pounds every month on gym memberships, fitness classes and supplements, yet think nothing of sleeping on a mattress we’ve disliked for the past eight years. We’ll obsess over skincare, nutrition and exercise whilst spending most of our day disconnected from natural light, fresh air and any meaningful connection to the outside world.

And before I sound smug, I’m writing this from my laptop indoors, so guilty as charged.

It’s slightly backwards when you stop and think about it.

The reality is that our homes influence thousands of tiny decisions every single day. How we sleep. How we wake up. Whether we’re encouraged to move. How much daylight we receive. Whether a space feels restorative or overstimulating.

Which brings me to the first place I’d focus if I wanted my home to better support my wellbeing: the bedroom.

I know it’s not glamorous. Nobody has ever gathered friends around to admire their blackout curtains.

But sleep remains one of the most powerful tools we have for supporting both physical and mental health, and a bedroom designed around rest looks very different to one designed just for Instagram. I’m interested in breathable natural bedding, blackout window treatments, good ventilation, thoughtful lighting and creating an environment is optimal for recovery.

The next thing I’d look at is light.

As designers, we’re taught to think about lighting aesthetically and functionally, however I find the biological side far more fascinating. Morning sunlight helps regulate our circadian rhythm, influences hormone production and plays a significant role in how alert, energised and focused we feel throughout the day. One of the simplest yet most impactful wellness upgrades in any home is creating opportunities to spend time in natural daylight, whether that's positioning a breakfast table beside a window or creating space for the morning coffee where sunlight arrives before emails do.

Next on the list: materials.

Which is where my worlds of design and wellbeing collide perfectly.

I’ve always loved timber, natural stone, fabrics and traditional plasters. Yes, they’re stunning. Yes, they age exceptionally well. But what I love most is the way they make a space feel. There is a reason the world’s best spas don’t resemble the inside of a plastic storage container. Natural materials bring warmth, texture and a connection to nature that manufactured finishes will never replicate. The design industry has a name for it: biophilic design.

And whilst wellness doesn’t require a six-figure renovation, there are some fascinating developments happening at the luxury end of the market.

Infrared and dry saunas are becoming increasingly common in private homes thanks to research suggesting potential benefits for recovery, circulation and longevity. Circadian lighting systems are being designed to mimic the changing colour temperature of natural daylight throughout the day. Whole-home water filtration, advanced air purification and dedicated recovery spaces and home gyms are beginning to sit alongside home cinemas and wine rooms on many clients’ wish lists.

Genuinely though, I don’t see these as luxury additions at all, I see them as investments in yourself, your health and how you feel every single day.

So to conclude my longer-than-I-expected Substack, in a world that seems determined to make us more distracted, more overstimulated and more exhausted, a home that helps you feel calm, rested and well might just be the ultimate luxury.

And frankly, that’s a trend I’m far more interested in than whether we're all supposed to be painting our ceilings aubergine this year.

Happy Sunday, guys. Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with me.

LGM

If nobody else was ever going to see your house, what would it look like?

It’s a surprisingly difficult question.

Remove Instagram, Pinterest, dinner parties, visiting family members and even the Amazon driver who catches a glimpse through the front door, and I suspect many of us would make very different decisions.

Imagine being handed a blank plot of land and one simple instruction: design a house that nobody else will ever see.

It’s a question I find myself thinking about and, considering I spend approximately 99.9% of my week designing homes, visiting homes, looking at homes and talking about homes, you’d hope I’d have a few answers.

So let’s get into it.

Personally, there wouldn’t be a single decision made based on trends, not that there ever is anyway, and my only consideration would be a simple one: would this make everyday life feel better?

And this is where it gets interesting.

I think many of us are making decisions based on entirely different questions..

Will it look expensive? Will people think I’ve got good taste?

Will it look good on Instagram?

Will my mother-in-law approve? Will Sharon like it? (Sorry Sharon, if you're reading this. It's not personal.)

And somewhere along the way, we’ve become incredibly good at designing homes for other people. But the only problem is, those people don’t actually live there.

You do.

I wonder how many kitchen islands have been installed by people who cook approximately twice a year but have spent long enough on Pinterest to become convinced they’re essential.

How many dining rooms are patiently waiting for the dinner party that’s been pencilled into the diary since 2022.

How many sofas have been purchased because they looked beautiful online, only to reveal themselves as decorative seating once somebody actually tries to spend an evening on them.

How many homes have been designed around Christmas Day rather than the other 364 days of the year.

One thing I’ve seen time and time again is that we have a tendency to design for a version of ourselves that doesn’t actually exist.

The person who hosts effortless dinner parties every weekend.

The family who gather around the dining table every evening discussing their day.

Meanwhile, most of us are eating pasta in front of Netflix whilst wondering where the remote has disappeared to.

And whilst there’s absolutely nothing wrong with aspiration, successful homes begin with honesty.

Whenever I’m working with a client, the conversations are never about furniture. Instead, I want to know how they live.

How do weekends look? Do they love to cook?

Talk me through a typical Tuesday morning? Where do the dogs sleep?

How much storage do you really need? Where does the inevitable pile of paperwork end up?

What frustrates you about your home now?

Because those answers tell me far more than Instagram saves ever could.

Your home isn’t a collection of beautiful objects, it’s a backdrop to everyday life.

And if nobody else was ever going to see mine, that’s exactly what I’d design around. Not the occasional threat of a dinner party or the approval of somebody who may visit once a year.

I’d design for everyday mornings, muddy dogs charging through the back door, somewhere to sit in the evening sun and enough storage that life didn’t constantly feel as though it was spilling out of cupboards.

When I picture the house I’d build if nobody else was ever going to see it, what I imagine isn’t really a house at all - it’s a way of living. Because when all is said and done, you’ll spend far more time living in your home than anybody else ever will.

It might as well be designed for you. After all, Sharon has her own house to rearrange.

Thanks for reading.

All my love.

LGM