The buds are starting to burst. The bulbs are shooting up and sprouting. Spring is here, and that means talk of bringing the outdoors in and connecting your interior with your exterior. They’re topics that just don’t get old, because here in the UK, we live for those moments when the weather is fair, and we can feel the spring air flowing right on through. So, what are my top four tips right now for connecting your indoors with your outdoors with the help of stone and tiles?
OUR HEAD OF CREATIVE, GRAZZIE'S LATEST GARDEN STYLING TIPS
1. FENCING FEELS
One area in this chat that I always think gets overlooked? Fencing. So many gardens are outlined with them and yet we don’t do anything to speak to those timber slats in our interiors. To really connect indoors and out, spare a thought for very chic, slender wood-style tiles like our Kinfolk collection. Minimal and understated, they work especially well in Scandi-style schemes as well as contemporary interiors, loft, warehouse and industrial decor. Timber slats don’t have to be restricted to natural wood shades either, so long as you’ve got a nod to the outdoors in your interiors too with something like a wood slat tile, then consider your spaces connected and then some.
To really connect the spaces, keep windows free of blinds or curtains and pull plant-life inside as well as out.
2. LOOKING ROSY
Have you fallen hard for stones like rose quartz and jade? Are you starting each and every day rolling your face with a jade roller or sweeping your cheeks with a rose quartz Gum Sha? These wellness rituals have put the precious stones front and centre of our daily beauty rituals with people going one step further and introducing them in their gardens. The stone of unconditional love, placing healing rose quartz in pots is believed to bring positive energy to your plants while fancier gardens still place the pretty pink crystal in fountains (see South Africa’s Sterrekopje healing farm where they have a majestic rose quartz water fountain) or rocky formations (eat your heart out rock gardens of old!)
If healing feels are up your street, then keep that presence going in your interior too with a tile like our new Himalaya salt crystal effect porcelain. Zen garden? Tick. And peaceful interior? Tick too.
And remember, connecting your indoors and out, doesn’t have to be limited to the room directly next to your outdoor space either.
3. PLANNING FOR PAVING
I know that laying paving indoors to out and vice versa is a given but there are ways of doing it and then there are ways of doing it. And I always think that first and foremost, it’s about your planning.
Pick a material for your indoors that you know is going to work outside too. You might not be in a position to re-do your garden if you’ve just splurged on a kitchen renovation but if your idea is to run the same tile indoors and out, make sure that you’re specifying one where the tile allows you to do just that. Our new Marlborough Porcelain is a tile that I’m pretty confident will be gracing kitchen floors up and down the country, but the beauty of that tile is that it works outside too. So, when the time to tile arrives, it’ll flow beautifully.
In this project, our Marlborough Porcelain graces their kitchen floor…
And when the time comes, it’ll also work perfectly outdoors, too…
If natural stone is more your thing but you love a parquet formation, a stone like Neranjo would work well, flowing like water from garden paving through those ceiling-to-floor partition doors and into your minimalist kitchen. In spring and summer, with those doors thrown open wide and a terrace decked out with work surface and pizza oven plus capacious dining table, you’ll have yourself one amazing indoor-outdoor kitchen that’ll be the envy of friends and family.
4. KEEP TILES TONAL
I love to mix and match materials throughout a property but when it comes to running a tile indoors and out, I really like to keep things tonal. Sticking to similar shades to blend the spaces, effortless.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in a new-era, modernist sort of home or a heritage home that’s worthy of being on design-led Inigo but if your two tiles meet indoors and out then I like to keep it tonal. That means, taking colours from the indoor floor (and wall) tiles and trying to pull that shade into the outdoors too. I totally get that people don’t always want to run the same tile inside and out (I’ve not done that in my own home either), so finding a balance with similar shades is a very happy medium.
Another option is to pick stone and tiles from the same “tile family”, we group tiles together either because they work well when paired, or because they’ve come from the same quarry and have simply been produced in different formats, be that cobble or parquet. Take a look at our new Moroccan Stones that team beautifully together.
A design idea to steal: Lay a vertical row of tiles on the threshold between indoors-and-out.
So, there we have it, four ideas. Connected, curated and 100% COVETABLE. (We hope).