Put practicality first when buying materials for your home
Buy boucle with a good inclusion of wool and a high rub count of 50,000 or more. File picture
Rush to short-term gratification based on looks alone — and right here is where you start paying.
Here are a few of my bêtes-noire — along with tips to wrestle back the dream with some practical balance.
Yes, like everyone, I grow faint at its loveliness pelted over Parisian apartments and high-street set dressing. Still, due to its textured construction, the inexpensive boucle has multiple snags. Its warm, fascinating landscape of loops and curls is suited only to officers’ quarters, not family life, as boucle must be carefully used and daintily maintained.
Taken from the French word boucler, to curl, subject cheaper boucle largely made up of polyester to too much friction (sit down a few thousand times) and it can pill and wear surprisingly quickly.
Ivory and white boucle is trending right now, so you can look forward to the joys of colour transference from sofa dressings or even your clothes across that cloudy corner group. Looped synthetic materials including corduroy, once flattened, and pulled out of position will rudely reveal the supporting material, and require a nail scissors snip which can lead to? Yes, a tiny hole.
Don’t expect the durability of leather with a finer featured seating group or chair in velvet, boucle and any material prone to attrition (rub) damage. If you do decide to nestle on this lovie, ensure you include both stain-protecting and even accidental protection cover in the deal (between three and five years).
Look for examples with high wool content, with a rub count of 50,000-plus (beyond the industry standard), consider darker colours, and keep pets off unless they are riding on a throw. Their hair and dander will be ingested, making frequent and potentially damaging cleans necessary. Clean boucle with a lightly damp cloth using water alone, and don’t soak it — ever. Berber carpeting and cats? Get ready for a hairy, unravelling tragedy.
I have to preface this by saying I love stainless steel. It has honesty, it has flash, and it’s very much on trend in kitchens and even decorative bits and bobs in 2025. How and ever, my recently installed kitchen Franke bowl-and-a-half remains unused (as far as I know), and I’ve taken to clattering the pots and pans in the utility room sink instead.
There was an unpleasant altercation over a potted plant being dumped into my glittering vessel over Christmas — the marriage barely survived. It’s only a matter of time before the signature “patination” begins with a stainless-steel sink. As a material, it’s extremely soft, and ordinary use with pans and utensils dragged over its glittering acres will scratch it up in short order. It’s also the loudest of the sink choices for impact noise — useful if you’re a hair-trigger neurotic such as myself.
There are two key buys to protect your luminous kitchen star. First of all, get a rubber sink mat for the base. These can be bought in attractive grey and black varieties, and they will take the weight out of falling saucepans and knife gouges. Top this with a bowl and wash in that, not the sink itself where possible.
On the drainer, if you’re likely to use that even from time to time, again another mat to take the percussive crash. Don’t drag anything across the surfacing and lift the mats daily to rinse out any waste caught under their sucker or ribbed base.
Buying a sink, honed and textured varieties (tweed) will show less wear with their slightly matt, duller surface. Never use gritty abrasive cleaners on S/S. If sound pads are properly installed under the sink, this should reduce the shattering clatter.
Laminate flooring between 6mm and 8mm generally has no wood content whatsoever but is a popular choice when we cannot afford even engineered flooring with a timber top layer. It’s tempting to be drawn in by the latest digital prints which present random beautiful figuring and colours — but weight in flooring really matters. Prices have never been better, and you can find truly beautiful plank styles for under €20 a square metre.
So, we have a malleable, light 8mm synthetic plank. You’re heavy on those two little feet, no matter what your weight. Creaking flooring with a slight bounce in high-traffic areas is unmistakably cheap. Thick wood flooring — the sort we’re imitating — doesn’t behave like that.
First of all, have any laminate and quality flooring installed by a pro’ unless your blithering attempts at DIY approach trade-level skill. That 8mm and 12mm flooring needs the right support to give it the structural support and the feel of a better, heftier product. The right underlay over a truly level subfloor is crucial.
Thin flooring types are best reserved for quieter rooms with less footfall in shoes. Bedrooms shrouded in a couple of rugs? Ideal. Here that slightly plastic feel and lack of impact resistance will matter less. Lift your sights to a 10mm to 12mm laminate floor and most of these performance problems will be kicked into touch, including smaller imperfections in your subfloor.
Glossy black marble is one of the signatures of a deluxe kitchen, but anyone who has their dark divine in a high shine will tell you — it’s a total pain. You can recognise a victim of black marble fever on sight. They never have a microfibre cloth out of their hand loitering anywhere near the counters.
Being porous, of course, marble must be sealed and its armour maintained religiously, but it’s the sophisticated reflectivity that kills the joy. Every water spot, smear and splash is highly visible, and porcelain counters in the same theatrical deep colour offer the authentic nerve-shattering pain of their crystalline inspiration. By the way — black is the least durable colour in real marble, and given enough direct UV, it can discolour and fade. You’re welcome.
So, the easiest way to avoid dirty glossy marble or porcelain (and even laminate — an economy sinner), is to either choose a lighter shade and/or a honed surface in the first place. Look into quartz composites before vouching for the screaming expense of natural marble. Complex veining will also interrupt the presence of dried droplets — so take your time deciding on colour. Test in place with a sample section of the stone.
Matt surfacing will diffuse and scatter light taking attention away from everyday muck.
If you go shiny — be prepared for regular polishing with a clean, microfibre cloth. Marble is a wonderful, prestige stone, and with proper sealing is highly heat-resistant and should last decades. Avoid acids like juice and coffee, wiping these accidental splashes up immediately, and keep in mind that you should never cut down into any marble, especially a softer black variety.
I’m going to make a din about a favourite of last year — reeded wood panelling, often used for acoustic control for both exterior and internal partition walls. There’s something I never expected of these beauties — they can trigger visual disturbances.
Sitting in a café in County Cork, the walls completely covered in fluted panels started to dance and pulse. I thought it might be a hormonal joy and gave my husband a little kick. He couldn’t unsee it, and we had to move. Since then, I’ve talked to a couple of friends who have used reeded panelling in various areas of their home, and they agree that some of their friends and family find their cladding weirdly unsettling.
Gamma oscillations in the brain were proven in a Dutch study to cause headaches, migraines and dizziness. I’m just shoehorning this in as an advisory to anyone who might have what’s termed vertical heterophoria (a reaction to vertical striping) or is easily overstimulated by pattern — check it out before you buy.
