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How to de-clutter with style: three ideas that turn storage into a statement
Adobe
De-cluttering your home this spring needn’t mean a parade of flat-pack storage boxes and hidden-away solutions. Homebuilding & Renovating Show interior design expert Julia Kendell believes storage can be a defining feature, something to be shown off, celebrated, and enjoyed every single day:
Spring is the season of renewal and for many of us, that means one thing: a reckoning with the clutter that has quietly colonised our homes over winter. But the annual spring clean need not be a grim exercise in bin bags and bare shelving. With a little creative thinking, de-cluttering becomes an opportunity to genuinely transform your space. The secret? Stop hiding your storage and start designing around it.
Here are three inspired ideas to bring beauty and order to every corner of your home.
1. The Hallway Library: High-Level Drama
The hallway and landing are among the most overlooked real estate in any home, transitional spaces that rarely receive the design attention they deserve. Yet these corridors of unused wall space represent a golden opportunity to create something truly spectacular.
The idea is elegantly simple: line the walls with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, utilising every inch of vertical space. Crucially, don’t stop at head height, push your shelving high, above door frames and windows where awkward gaps so often go to waste. These elevated shelves are perfect for the kind of books you cherish but rarely reach for. Every spare surface becomes purposeful.
To elevate the look from functional to truly high-end, embrace colour drenching, the interior designer’s favourite technique of painting walls, shelves, ceiling and woodwork in the same rich, enveloping shade. Think deep forest green, burnished tobacco, or a moody inky blue. Colour drenching unifies the shelving with its surroundings, creating the immersive atmosphere of a private gentlemen’s library or a Bloomsbury study. The books themselves become part of the artwork.
If space allows, tuck a small reading chair, perhaps a tub chair in complementary velvet, into a corner of the landing. Suddenly, a forgotten through-space becomes the most inviting room in the house.
2. The Kitchen Larder Wall: Beauty in Plain Sight
In the kitchen, clutter tends to accumulate on worktops, a chaotic sprawl of appliances, jars, and odds and ends that make even a well-designed space feel cramped. The solution is not to hide everything away, but to curate what is on show.
Consider dedicating one wall, ideally a chimney breast or alcove, to a bespoke larder-style shelving system that runs from floor to ceiling. Open shelves at eye level display beautiful pantry staples in matching glass jars, vintage ceramic canisters, and artful stacks of cookbooks. Lower shelves, fitted with wicker baskets, house the less photogenic essentials. The result is a kitchen that feels curated rather than crowded, channelling the relaxed charm of a French farmhouse or Scandi kitchen.
The key is consistency: invest in a set of matching storage vessels and keep the palette tight. Two or three tones drawn from your existing kitchen scheme will make the display feel intentional. Hang a simple pendant light above the shelving to pool warm light over the arrangement.
3. The Bedroom Window Seat: Hidden Depths
The bedroom is where clutter becomes truly stressful. Research consistently shows that a disordered sleep environment disrupts rest and raises anxiety. Yet the bedroom is also where storage is most often sacrificed in the name of aesthetics.
If your bedroom has a bay window or a deep windowsill recess, you are sitting on untapped potential. A fitted window seat with lift-up upholstered lids transforms this underused area into generous hidden storage, ideal for spare bedding, out-of-season clothing, or the accumulated miscellany of bedside life. Flanking the seat with slim floor-to-ceiling shelving on either side completes the picture, framing the window beautifully and providing a home for books, candles, and personal objects.
Upholster the seat in a fabric that ties the room together, a tonal stripe, a soft bouclé, or a classic check, and add cushions to make it as much a place to sit and read as a practical storage solution. It is one of those rare interior moves that delivers on both form and function in equal measure.
You can meet Julia Kendell for a free one-to-one consultation at the next Homebuilding & Renovating Show by claiming tickets via this bespoke link
(19-22 March, NEC, Birmingham)
