Fay Allison Interior Design

Fay Allison Interior Design Welcome to Fay Allison Interior Design, your partner in creating beautiful, timeless spaces.

I love to mix pattern... the trick is scale, not colour. Everyone gets stuck trying to match the shades and then ends up...
26/08/2026

I love to mix pattern... the trick is scale, not colour. Everyone gets stuck trying to match the shades and then ends up with three prints that are all roughly the same size, which is why it feels busy rather than layered.

So what's working here. The terracotta leaf print is the big one, it does the talking. The gold checkerboard is mid, it holds the middle. The blue ticking stripe is small and repetitive and it's basically doing the job of a plain. Three different sizes, so your eye has somewhere to rest.

The embroidery in the middle could be a problem. It's beautiful and it's the same scale as the leaf print, so they're both shouting. One of them may have to go.

The other thing nobody tells you: you need something with no pattern at all. That plain oatmeal linen looks like the boring one. It's the reason the rest of it works.

If you've got a room where you've bought three patterns you love and it's somehow gone wrong, that's usually the scale. Book a free 15-minute intro call and tell me what you've got.

24/08/2026

Same room. Same angle. Same house.

The difference isn't budget — it's decisions. Where the light falls. What stays and what goes. Which three things do the heavy lifting so the other thirty don't have to.

Most people can see that a room isn't working. Far fewer can see why. That's the bit I'm for.

I'm based in Derbyshire, working across the county and beyond — period homes and new builds both. If there's a room you've been going round in circles on, drop me a message and I'll send over my pricing guide.

19/08/2026

A “simple” room redesign is roughly 200 decisions, and about 190 of them are things you’d never think to think about. Where the sockets go. Whether that lovely white turns yellow at 4pm because the room faces north. Whether the wardrobe will actually make it up the stairs (ask me how I know).
Most people don’t want to be making those calls on a Tuesday night. They just want the room to feel right when they walk in.
That’s my bit.
I’m based in Derbyshire and work with homes across Duffield, Belper and the wider DE56 area — period properties and new builds both. If there’s a room you’ve been going round in circles on, send me a message and I’ll pop my pricing guide over. No obligation, no hard sell.

12/07/2026

There's one question I always come back to before choosing a wallpaper: do I want this wall to be the star, or the backdrop?

It sounds simple, but it decides everything. A big, bold pattern makes the wall the star of the room. It brings drama and personality, which is exactly what you want in a hallway, a downstairs loo, or one wall you'd love to give a bit of wow.

A small pattern does the opposite. From across the room it almost reads as a texture rather than a print, so rather than fighting your furniture, it flatters it and becomes a beautiful backdrop for everything in front of it.

Get that decision right first and the size chooses itself, before you've even thought about colour.

One last tip from experience: never judge a wallpaper from the little sample in your hand. Hold it up, step right back, and picture it running across the whole wall, because a pattern that looks lovely at A4 can feel like a lot at full size.

Same roll of paper. Completely different outcome. And that's one of my favourite little tricks, because it's the difference between a wall that fights the room and one that makes it.

If you have a room in mind, my £150 Design Clarity Call is a relaxed way to talk it through. Just send me a message and I'll share the details.

12/07/2026

Everyone wants more space. Big, open, airy, knock the wall through. And then you get it, and the room feels like a departure lounge. Lovely and spacious, and somehow impossible to actually settle in.

Here's what I want to share with you: the answer isn't more furniture. It's zoning. You break one big room into little areas that each know what they're for, a sitting bit, a reading bit, an eating bit, and there are three simple ways to do it.

First, rugs. Give each area its own. One under the sofa, a separate one under the dining table, and straight away the eye reads them as two different rooms. No wall required.

Second, light it in sections rather than one big light doing the whole room. A pendant low over the table, a lamp by the reading chair, a pair on a sideboard. Each little pool of light becomes its own zone, and the darker bits in between do the dividing for you.

And third, pull the furniture off the walls. This is the one people find hardest. Turn a sofa so its back faces the next area, and that back becomes an invisible wall. Float it all in, group it up like it's mid-conversation, and let the middle of the room work for you instead of leaving a runway down it.

This is honestly my favourite kind of room to be handed, because the hard part is already done. The space is there, it just needs warming up. If yours could do with warming up, a Design Clarity Call is where we start. It's a £150 sit-down to work through what your room needs and how I'd approach it.

Drop me a message and I'll tell you more.
Fay x

09/07/2026

If you've got a small room, I promise you it is not the lost cause you think it is. You've just got to be a bit cleverer with it. Here's what I want to share with you: three things, and none of them cost a fortune.

First, and it's my favourite because nobody expects it: horizontal lines make a wall look wider. A low run of shelving, panelling with a horizontal line, even the way you hang your art. Stretch it sideways and the whole wall relaxes and opens out.

Second, be ruthless about what's actually in the room. A small space and clutter are a terrible combination, because every extra thing on show makes the walls feel closer. So be really intentional. And if you don't have built-in storage, buy furniture that hides some. An ottoman that opens up, a bed with drawers underneath, a coffee table with a shelf. Storage you can't see is what keeps a small room calm.

And third, mirrors. Pop one opposite a window and it bounces the daylight straight back into the space, so the room feels brighter and further-reaching than it really is.

Small rooms are some of the most satisfying spaces I get to work on, because when you get them right, they don't feel small at all. They feel snug and clever and completely intentional. If your small room is fighting you rather than working for you, a Design Clarity Call is where we start. It's a £150 sit-down to work through what your space needs and how I'd approach it. Drop me a message and I'll tell you more.

Fay x

09/07/2026

Let's settle the great art-hanging debate, because nearly everyone gets this wrong, and it's almost always the same mistake. You're hanging it too high.

The number I work to is 145. As in 145cm from the floor to the centre of your picture. Not the top, not the bottom. The middle. Because that's roughly eye level for most of us, and it's the height where art looks like it belongs, instead of drifting up near the ceiling like it's trying to escape.

The same rule works for a group of pictures. Treat the whole arrangement as one big picture and land the centre of that cluster at 145. Everything hangs around it.
A couple of exceptions, because rules are made to be bent. High ceilings, you can nudge it up a touch. Hanging above a low sofa, bring it down a little so the art still sits close to the furniture instead of drifting off above it. Use your eye, but 145 is where you start.

It's honestly one of the cheapest upgrades there is. Same art, same wall, more or less the same nail. You just move it to where it was always meant to be, and the whole wall suddenly looks like someone knew exactly what they were doing.
If you'd like that eye over your own home, a Design Clarity Call is where we start. It's a £150 sit-down to work through what your space needs and how I'd approach it. Drop me a message and I'll tell you more.

Fay x

02/07/2026

Let's talk about your coffee table, because there's a decent chance it's the wrong size, and it's throwing your whole seating area off without you ever quite putting your finger on why.

Here's what I want to share with you: there are actual numbers for this. Designers don't just stand there squinting at it and hoping.

Three measurements do the work. Width first: your coffee table should be no more than two-thirds the width of your sofa. Any bigger and it looks like it's eating the room. If your sofa is really long, don't hunt for one giant table, use two smaller ones or a nest that tucks together. Then height: it wants to sit at roughly the same height as your sofa seat, give or take a few centimetres, so it's comfortable to reach. And distance: leave about 30 to 40cm between the sofa and the table. Close enough to put your cup down without launching yourself off the seat, far enough that you're not bashing your shins every time you stand up.

Get those three right, width, height and distance, and the whole seating area suddenly looks considered. It's such a small thing, and it makes a huge difference.

This is the kind of detail I love getting right in a room, the bit most people never think to measure. If your space feels nearly there but never quite finished, a Design Clarity Call is where we start. It's a £150 sit-down to work through what your room needs and how I'd approach it.

Drop me a message and I'll tell you more.
Fay x

01/07/2026

You've decorated the room. Spent proper money on it. And it still feels a bit off, and you can't quite say why.

Nine times out of ten, it's the lighting.

One big light in the middle of the ceiling, flicked on and off like an office. It flattens everything. No warmth, no shadow, no depth. And depth is the exact thing your eye reads as "finished."

The fix is the cheapest change in the whole house. You don't need thousands, you need layers. I aim for around nine little sources in a room. Table lamps, a floor lamp in the corner, a picture light, something low on a shelf, a candle, the fire, a reading lamp by your chair, something throwing light up a wall instead of down onto your head.

Turn the big light off tonight and turn five smaller ones on. Then tell me the room feels the same. It won't.

This is the sort of thing I sort in a Room Design, the details that quietly make a space work. If your rooms feel "nearly there" but never finished, that gap is usually what I'm for.

Fay x

I spent last Friday morning at The Dragon in Willington with a fellow interior designer — and as always, my eye went str...
23/04/2026

I spent last Friday morning at The Dragon in Willington with a fellow interior designer — and as always, my eye went straight to the room.

What I love about this space is how well it walks the line between rustic character and considered design. The rich blue painted wall, rustic plank oak floors, and exposed ceiling beams give it warmth and authenticity — but this isn't a space that's happened by accident. The painted beam finish, the carefully chosen furniture — someone made deliberate decisions here, and it shows.

There's a real skill in designing spaces that feel effortless.

I love taking in design inspiration where you find it — even over a Friday morning coffee.
📍 The Dragon at Willington, Derbyshire

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