Here’s a trick you might already know – add an accent lamp to your kitchen and it’ll go from zero to hero. A desk lamp on the worktop or an angle-something-or-other stretching out of the wall. It was on my to do list for this house when I started it five years ago. But, instead of dwelling on how we’re getting on with our respective lists today, lets just focus on how other people have made it happen.*

1. In the Karakoy Rooms in Istanbul by RunArchitects.

2. In Vanessa Bruno’s kitchen. Her whole apartment is much worshipped, go on google it and see how many times it comes up.

Lilac kitchen units look surprisingly good don’t they?

3. From The Selby so obviously in a house owned by ‘right characters’.

Did you actually spot the lamp? It’s also right messy in that kitchen.

*By doing the wiring before they started tiling.

Christopher Dresser

A tiny design history lesson to start this week… I learnt about Christopher Dresser when I saw his work in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery a few days ago. Born in Glasgow in 1834, he has been described as the first industrial designer and was influential in the UK, France and the US. Nice jugs aren’t they? […]

Friday quiz / trend alert

This just in from our correspondent in Munich… Can you tell what it is? Let’s pull back a bit… Folks, give yourself a pat on the back if you guessed right – it’s a Lego house number! Or as our continental roving reporter has it, ‘the undersung hero of the house numbering world. This is the beauty […]

Get real stylists

Belted magazines? Do I like this or is it just a notch too far? I find it whimsical in the extreme, but then maybe it would be nice to make a feature of all those Guardian Weekend magazines that are gathering dust until the day I cut that thing out of them. What do you […]

Rod, Jane and Freddy

…That’s what I always like to shout when more than two of us have come into work in stripey tops. But what I’m really talking about is the interiors bain of summer – the nautical look. No matter whether you’ve got a Hamptons mansion or a bungalow in Frinton it always, to my mind, looks […]