Exposed Brick Inspiration

With plans to move to Manchester in full swing, it’s time to think about interiors for our new pad. Manchester is famed for its red brick architecture (part of the reason I love this city so much) and the city is awash with converted mills and factories that feature gorgeous red brickwork complete with huge windows in many a flat.

Take a look at these images from Pinterest that offer some red brick inspiration.

Red brickwork had me at hello on first viewings of ‘Gossip Girl.’ Dan and Rufus (and Jenny) Humphrey live in a gorgeous converted loft in Brooklyn, NYC on the show and the place oozes bohemian style with stacks of records, guitars and worn in furniture.

Brickwork adds warmth to a room and gives it a traditional ‘rustic’ feel. I personally prefer brickwork in open living spaces in kitchens but as these photos suggest- red brick really does work for a bedroom too.

Sourcing iron furniture to go with the walls will complement the traditional industrial feel to the room but plush sofas, rugs, warm lighting and wooden accents will make a converted loft feel more like home. 

Picture Wall Mural

A fair few summers ago I got completely inspired by photos of mismatched picture frame walls that seemed to crop up on Pinterest and Tumblr every now and again. I’ve always loved sketching and decided to start a project to make a frame wall of my own filled with sketches. Here are some images from Pinterest that show the photo wall in action, a great place to display the photo wall is on a staircase and another twist is to hang the frames old fashioned-ly by tying some ribbon or string to the top of them to visibly show them hanging: 

I began my quest for the perfect photo wall by going to various charity shops every now and again to find interestingly shaped wooden frames of all sizes which I then decided to sand down and paint black. If you want to do a similar project, be on the look out for interesting shapes, frame textures and frame thicknesses to give your photo wall a mismatched feel to it. Here are the frames I’ve collected so far:

I sketched a butterfly for this tiny square frame and Andy Warhol and Edie Campbell in this rectangular frame. If you don’t fancy your hand at sketching then black and white prints and photographs will equally do the job. You could have one large print as a centre piece and work around that if you are lucky to have a particularly large space to fill. I got this huge framed print for just £1 from a car boot sale!

I'm hoping to find some frames to home these half-finished sketches and some ornate oval mirrors would finish off this wall mural perfectly... I'll be sure to show you the finished result (eventually!)