ON THE ROAD: THE IDEAL HOME SHOW _
We went to The Ideal Home show the other week. The Ideal Home Show, formerly called the Ideal Home Exhibition. It is an annual event that’s held at Olympia, in London since March 2015. The show was devised by the Daily Mail newspaper in 1908 and continued to be run by them until 2009, it was then sold to events and publishing company – Media10.
The Ideal Home show’s goal is to bring together everything associated with having an ‘ideal home’, such as including the latest inventions for the modern home, introducing beauty, interiors, technology as well as a great way to showcase the latest housing designs, including many speakers that are held over each day on the main stage situated in central position on the ground floor.
A regular feature of the show for many years was the Ideal Home Competition, where designers were invited to design their ‘ideal home’ in a three-dimensional scope. The winning schemes were presented at the exhibition the following year, a great pivotal execution for creatives to see.
The whole exhibition was planned out accordingly into sections; interiors, beds, lighting, bathroom, outdoor, garden, accessories, kitchen, food, beauty, fashion and much more!
One talk we wanted sit in on and gain inspiration from was the Sophie Robinson talk. The talk revolves around guidance on how to be your own interior designer, whilst giving guidance on planning architecture, layouts and interiors for your home.
The focus was mostly on the design process involved in the show home and offering guidance on how to be your own interior designer; sharing her step by step design process to draw attention to the importance of creating architectural plans and layouts to make sure the basic foundations are covered before the creative design stage can take place.
Sophie is a well-established interior designer, she describes herself as ‘bonkers for colour’ and is obsessed with cushions! Sophie has been in the interior design industry for the past twenty years, with her love of colour, passion and enthusiasm it’s no wonder she has been able to work for and with many magazines, TV programmes and alongside many top retailers in the country. She has designed thousands of room schemes which has culminated in her being invited to judge the best British emerging design talent on BBC2’s The Great Interior Design Challenge, as well as being one of the main designers involved in the Ideal Home Show for her second year running.
The talk was a great way to show us how she planned out her own interior schemes for the show house that was displayed at The Ideal Home Show, showing samples and suppliers as well including imagery of her own home – that extra personal touch. Sophie gave us her insight into her design process. Her first step was to sketch out your ideal home on paper and create architecture layouts to scale before any other creative designs and plans commence. Step two is to plan how much you ideally want to spend (and to be realistic) – keeping a note of how much things cost in an organised strategy and working towards the budget.
Her two main inspirations platforms are Pinterest and Instagram and describes this as ‘home porn.’ As Instagram has exploded into this important influential social media platform, Sophie mentioned that she has sourced many of her items & materials through these avenues giving attention to smaller companies, also giving the design that unique touch.
Sophie is on trend and on demand, no wonder – as her schemes and designs are always cohesive, full of life and most importantly- COLOURFUL! Sophie challenges the boundaries of design, colours and patterns, making her designs unique and exciting.
Upstairs was the food and drinks section, a great way for people to have tasters before they buy, as well as festival themed food stalls and cabins which most of them were creative with for their stands – it was a great social space for everyone to sit, eat and chat about the event. This also gave the food market an opportunity to display their products at discounted prices to entice its consumers.
There was also talks upstairs in the food and drinks section with spokesmen on, cooking and demonstrating techniques and tips using the food and equipment utensils in which they are selling/endorsing to its audience.
Overall, The Ideal Home show was a great exhibition to visit, the space was designed and executed well with a huge range of exhibitors and information to gain insight into what brands have to offer, whilst collecting information and inspiration.
We look forward to attending again next year!
