Want To Know The Biggest Interior Trend For 2017? It's Affordable, Green & Clean and Available at IKEA Right Now.
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Trends in fashion cycle every 20 years without fail. In the 70s it was flared jean bell bottoms, and in the 90s they returned like clockwork and you were nothing without your bootcut jeans.
Home interior trends are a little more unpredictable, but one of the huge trends of the 1970s is making a huge comeback in 2017, and the good news is it's very affordable and doesn't involve ripping out an entire bathroom or kitchen.
Pantone, the US experts on colour categorisation named their 2017 colour of the year to be 'Greenery', and The Telegraph stated,
"With Greenery, Pantone hammered home what a lot of us have been suspecting for a while: plants are here to stay. And, if the approach of their campaign is anything to go by, plants in urban environments, for digitally connected people - which can only mean that houseplants are set to become an even bigger phenomenon in 2017."
So the modern, chic interior can get a revamp & look oh so 2017 by investing in a good couple of house plants. Where better to start than IKEA, where you'll get more bang for your buck, or plant for your pound as it were, than a typical garden centre.
IKEA has everything you'll need, plants of all shapes and sizes, pots, plant stands, indoor growing equipment and more.
The trend within the trend looks like it will be cacti, which I've always loved, and IKEA have lots of varieties of them to start a little collection should you be like me and not too great with remembering to water my plants. Cacti need less attention and can thrive indoors for years.
If you think you are so totally un-green fingered that you could even kill a cactus, IKEA has a bountiful selection of fake plants. I've a mixture of real and fake to show you, so let's get stuck in.
Before
I told IKEA I wanted to make over my small bathroom into an indoor jungle, so they sent me a selection of items to make my dream a reality.
My bathroom is pretty plain. I'm in a rental, so I can't go totally mad renovating, so adding fresh accessories and plants is a nice easy way to jazz up what otherwise is a very ordinary room.
Ta da! My mini rainforest has been added! A mix of real and fake plants, and charcoal bathroom accessories.
At the sink station I've added ceramic cacti ornaments (£12) and clean white soap and toothbrush holders.
The two plants at the sink are real, the smaller being £7.50 and the larger at £19 . They are a plant called the Peace Lily, and it's included in Buzzfeed's run down of plants which can purify the air within your living spaces. So besides being beautiful, it's also making your air cleaner.
The large white ceramic pots are £2 which is a total bargain.
My window area has the FEJKA fake grass potted plant box (£20) which is satisfyingly neat and tidy. The grey knitted storage pots are a set of four, watch out for the other pot later. In the bathroom I used the two small knitted pots to store shower gel.
The two plants behind the shower space are both fake, but look pretty convincing to me. The larger plant is a fake bamboo and for £35 it's huge. It's nice to know I won't end up killing it!
So I'm really happy with my bathroom makeover, but I had some cacti left over that I ran out of space for, so I've added them to my living room to show you how you can use smaller plants to liven up your interiors too.
I'm an absolute sucker for carnivorous plants, and IKEA have four different types, the classic being the Venus flytrap.
It's almost impossible to grown one of these from seed (I've tried), and I've a previous murder charge for letting one die before when a certain toddler worked out if you poked the 'mouths' of the plant they will snap shut.
Unfortunately if you trigger the trap too much without there being a tasty fly in there for the plant to digest, you literally exhaust the plant and it ends up dying. So while it might be tempting to trigger the jaws to snap shut by poking the plant, be aware you are effectively weakening it and increasing the chance of it not living through the next month.
Okay, so that's my flytrap lecture over, on to the easiest plants to look after in the world, and the most bad ass cause they can cause you a great deal of pain should you accidentally brush against one- cacti!
I had a collection of cacti when I lived in Holywood when Smix was a baby, but once he got mobile I had to move them around out of his way so much, I ended up getting rid of them. Now he's nine, if he pokes one that's his own fault and not my bad parenting, so welcome back spiky friends!
IKEA sent me five prickly beauties from their excellent diverse cacti on offer and I found two pots fitted beautifully into the rectangular grey knitted bathroom accessory pot. I've seen 'non-pot' pots as another interior trend, and there's a Belfast company who sells plants in these heavy paper sacks with shiny gold interiors.
So my living room now has cacti and a flytrap, but also the large palm like houseplant is another from the Buzzfeed list of plants that can filter out toxins in your air. It's a cornstalk dracaena, also from IKEA but bought two years ago. If you really like the look of it I'm sure they would have something similar in their large plant section.
Lastly keeping with the cacti trend, they kindly sent this cuddly cacti for Smix! I love it to bits! You'll find lots of cacti items round the whole store, including the must buy for me- cacti print tumblers for 75p.
So let the door close on my glimpse into my home, the final touch for the bathroom jungle being this magic unicorn head which I found in Home Bargains.
Are you ready to get green-fingered and embrace the houseplant trend of 2017? Shop everything you've seen at IKEA online.
