Contemporary

Clinical, sterile, please-don’t-touch interiors make many contemporary-style houses feel more like design showrooms. Natasha Brinsmead reveals how to turn them into true homes.

An at-a-glance guide to fireplace design styles. The fireplace has been a prominent interior feature ever since man discovered fire. With the advent of central heating a few millenia later, the fire is no longer such a vital part of a home, but a well thought out fireplace design can really pull together a room and create a vital focal point. Here, H&R looks at different styles of fireplace, to help you decide what suits your room.

An era-by-era guide to decorative mouldings. When designing your home, it's all in the details, and all too often the details are forgotten. Here, H&R guides you through a variety of decorative moulding styles for your home.

Character is not just about the interior details - it has to be injected at the room planning stage, too. It’s easy to bring it out in older houses, but just how do self-builders add character to their new homes, traditional or contemporary in style? Jason Orme reveals the golden rules

Great ideas for your project. Some great ideas from Homebuilding and Renovating magazine to make your bathroom functional and luxurious.

How to turn a run down kitchen into a dream kitchen - Part one looks at removing the old kitchen and designing a new layout. Inheriting an unloved and old-fashioned kitchen may seem a little daunting, but with plenty of forward planning and a little practical knowledge, you can end up with your dream kitchen.

How to turn a run down kitchen into a dream kitchen - Part two. Many people choose to have no heating at all in their kitchen, feeling it unnecessary in a room that often becomes unbearably hot whilst cooking anyway. However, for those that use their kitchens for more than just cooking, or who want somewhere to hang damp tea towels, there are several options.

How to turn a run down kitchen into a dream kitchen - part three looks at small kitchens, getting a design, and fitting a kitchen. If you only have a small space, try to think about whether certain functions, such as the laundry, could be carried out elsewhere...

It may be simpler, but can a wireless home network ever compete with the speed and stability of a hard-wired system? And which one’s best for you?

Steps three, four and five - moulding the house to your needs; making the house greener and making contemporary design work. What makes some renovations great and others not quite so good? Natasha Brinsmead presents the five steps to success.

Steps one and two: Making the most of what you have. What makes some renovations great and others not quite so good? Natasha Brinsmead presents the five steps to success. Steps one and two look at making the most of what you already have, and how to save some of the property's original features.

Transform your home on a budget. One of the cleverest and most effective ways of saving money when renovating is to mix more expensive items with cheap off-the-shelf buys. Kitchens are the perfect room in which to employ this technique...

Transform your home on a budget. Low costs do not have to equal low-quality finishes when it comes to renovating old properties — there are many ways to keep a lid on your budget. Here, Natasha Brinsmead reveals how she and her husband, Bill, kept down costs during their Victorian house renovation.

When it comes to good interior design, trends do, inevitably, play a huge role in getting it right, but it is only worth investing in these trends if they will work within the style of your home and the lifestyle you lead — basically good interior design should be liveable as well as fashionable.

The most stylish homes are those where the interiors look to have evolved to be a reflection of the people living there — the complete antithesis of developers’ show homes which reveal zero imagination and often look to be the result of a quick scoot around a DIY superstore.

'First impressions last', or so they say, and whilst the exterior of your project can be built to impress, what about the interiors? The entrance hall is the first thing your guests will see when entering your home.

An intelligent lighting scheme will work with you – and your smart home – to ensure each area of your home is perfectly lit, at exactly the right time and with absolutely no exertion from you. Melanie Griffiths explains.