I am invited into people’s houses to help make it into their home. Weaving a new story that is unique to them and them only. The building itself has usually stood for many people before the them, and although it may need to stretch or flex, someone else will follow behind with their own dreams of ‘home’. Proof that decoration is, in fact, a love letter.

We start our conversation with what colour works for them and the room we are in. I know that this is not what we are discussing. We are trying to find the key that will turn them and their house from strangers to lovers. To twig how they inherit a collection of walls and woodwork, but then weave them into a cradle.

I’m thinking of the life this new place will bring to them. Is it a deep desire to go back to the safety they felt as a child, or a mental deep cleanse towards a new narrative? Is it the place where their family will grow; or is it where their life will streamline? Thinking of love in its best guise, does this thinking, then decorating acknowledge that ‘I am home’?

Our bonds to a place are formed from memories, feelings, and others. Unpacking them into a new place we barely know, we craft a hopeful tale of I, You and We around our dining table. Me in my garden, you in your library. We order chairs, spades and bookcases to furnish our dreams of a good life.

When we move in, our relationship with this house is new and we are still visitors seeking a happy place. Looking for something to anchor us. The wall colour, the kitchen worktop, the rugs – only when they are chosen and placed does it become our home. The beginning of the happy ending rather than the credits, as a home is never complete – in both decoration and behaviour.

Children are born and a nursery is created. They move rooms as they get older, changing colours and posters as they navigate their own relationship with the house. And then they leave. But their room is still their room, and those neon pink walls are still an interpretation of them and what home is to them.

There is a corner of our sofa that belonged to my beloved Labrador. The sofa is still with us, painfully he is not – but it is still his corner wherever this sofa is.

We want to create a place where everything we own (as well as everything we feel and want to feel) resembles what we hoped for. The past, the present and the future, trading pounds and time for hope and happiness. Every new front door means leaving things and people behind, instead gathering new vessels and valuable relationships.

I know we are now entering the peak buying and selling period of the year. With spring unfurling in front of us, our thoughts turn to the seasonal refresh – the decorative version of washing your windows.

Home is just the name we give to the connections between us, the painted walls and the world beyond us. All the navigation of love and place and rightfulness. This spring, please paint, arrange or think on your happy place.

Cassandra x

Falling in love with a stranger