Sometimes, however hard you try, certain mistakes come up again and again.  These are my top 10 peeves in interiors which I have been mulling over this week.  Feel free to add more in comments.

The paint colour that looked so good on the tin but in fact is actually hideous.

This is the one colour that ends up looking like someone has been sick on the wall, looks really bad against all of your other furniture and fabrics, and which has one of two outcomes.

a)  You pretend you like it to avoid admitting it was a dreadful mistake and then shudder whenever you look at it for the rest of your life, or..

b)   You paint over it all again before anyone notices the initial pukey colour.

Buying a rug that is too small.

It looked great in the shop or online, but when you get it home and site it under the coffee table/dining table/bed, you realize it is in fact a rug from Lilliput and only the edges are visible.

Not measuring furniture and the space it has to fit into. 

Removing windows, doors or sawing up furniture is not a happy event when the sofa turns up and you cannot get it into the house.  And if you do get it into the house, it dwarfs the room and looks ridiculous.  Tape measures are quite useful before you buy furniture.

‘Pee Rugs’.

These are those horrible rugs that fit around the bottom of the loo.  Usually in fluffy towelling and sugary shades, plus they are slippery if on tiles and basically a piss catcher for men.  Horrible all around.  Bin immediately.

Vertical Strip Blinds. 

Is your home actually an office or a doctor’s surgery as these suggest?  These plastic strip blinds are for lazy people who ruin the rest of their decor by adding them, they are aesthetically hideous and create a clinical and sterile image.  Only acceptable if you have a habit of role-playing doctors and nurses all the time in the privacy of your home.

White carpets and sofas. 

This creates the worst ever experience for guests when given any form of food or beverage in your home.  ‘Glass of red?’ becomes a moment of horror to visitors, who probably turn it down for fear of a spillage.  Plus if you have children or pets, it won’t stay white anyhow, but will have mysterious yellow stains and patches where the Vanish cleaner did not quite work.

Leather Sofas.

Design-wise and visually a great idea, but usually they turn out to be  cold in winter, sticky on the thighs in summer, and run the risk of an unanticipated and unexpected slide right off the sofa at times for unwitting persons.

The Statement Piece of Furniture.

That will be the Eames/Le Corbusier/Balzac chair or similar.  However achingly cool in showing how hip you are, this piece is trouble with a capital T.  Any useage by a small child, (or over-excitable guest), will reduce the owner to palpitations as the offender crawls/scribbles or bounces on it.  Not worth the blood pressure it induces.

Artex Textured Ceilings & Walls.

In the rush of the 70’s to foreign holiday locations such as Mexico and Spain, these were de rigeur in creating a cosmopolitan feel in homes.  However, nowadays they are a total no-no, and usually only applied by dodgy landlords and developers to cover cracked walls and ceilings – sometimes in nausea inducing swirls.  They can graze knuckles and draw blood if bumped into when on a wall, collect dust and are a design crime that needs to go.  Plaster straight on top if you have to, but remove immediately or else never let anyone into your home again.

Nothing on the walls except a huge flatscreen TV. 

Homes need personality, and whilst a TV is part of life, having no pictures or mirrors on the walls makes a home seem cold and uninviting.  Even if you use cheap framed posters as prints, Art makes a house into a home.

Pet moans over now, please feel free to add more.