Keep the holiday feeling alive in your home

Banjo looks at holiday and hotel interiors and how we can take inspiration from our own break, near or far

I am dreaming of a holiday. And there is no place like a UK holiday booking website to take the pulse of local interior design and learn how far a place has leaned into its location. Any swashbuckling travellers who ventured south this summer will be awash with white walls and coral motifs in Cornwall. Or perhaps you might be sinking into your cream linen sofa in your Cotswolds country cottage or wondering, am I even in Scotland if it doesn’t have tartan, tweed and complimentary shortbread? Note, I am raging if there is no free shortbread.

We’re all inspired by place when it comes to designing and furnishing our dwellings. As holidaymakers, we also want to feel like we are, in fact, on holiday. This is all well and good until we inspect the decorations and see they are made a million miles away. If your cushion has travelled more than you this year, we have a problem.

We deserve more from our spaces and we owe it to our places.

Holiday cottages and second homes are already eroding local culture and taking away valuable housing stock from young people or key workers. That’s a problem for another column in another publication. However, we can vote with our voices by leaving a polite review suggesting more local objets d’art or applauding the inclusion of local artists in a holiday home.

On a larger scale, vernacular buildings like quant bothies in Scotland are being subjected to modern, out of place extensions that destroy the soul of a building or worse, bulldozed to make way for modern monstrosities. 

You can, of course, vote with your wallet when it comes to how you stay, play and stray.
Seek out galleries or local artists, makers, tinkerers and businesses who are creating one-of-a-kind pieces and spaces. Go a little deeper than the artists who are servicing the tourists and look for exhibitions or quiet, retiring types who aren’t on show. Warning: they may not want to be found.
Hunt out local flea markets and car-boot sales and sure, you will curse your partner when they drag you on three buses through Hungary to a car-boot sale at 6am, but you will thank them later. (Thank you, Ro.)

Of course, there are many spaces that pass the place test. They manage to capture the feeling of a destination, not with objects but with subtle, local design cues and materials. Embracing locally sourced clay plaster from Cornish brand Clayworks, fresh foliage foraged from nearby hills or using plentiful, locally sourced materials, either new or reclaimed.

We may even be so inspired that we return home and want to keep the holiday spirit alive. When I returned from Tunisia and I was adamant we have a bright yellow door or a mashrabiyya – a projecting oriel window enclosed with carved wood latticework and stained glass. Of course, I then remember I live on a remote Scottish island and my builder isn’t equipped with the materials and generational knowledge to whip one up. I could, of course, have bought a miniature replica from a local gift shop, but you can bet it wasn’t made nearby.

I still like to think we can have the best of both worlds. My home reflects the place I live and it is a canvas for the places I have been. I will always incorporate ideas from my travels and continue to fill my home with pottery, pictures and shortbread. We must never forget the shortbread. It’s Scotland, after all.