Home blogs vs Home mags

There was a time when my only tangible inspiration surrounding interiors was to be found uniquely in glossy, picture-packed magazines that cost an eyeball in monetary worth. The plus side was that each purchased magazine was read from cover to cover and generally kept lingering around the house for a long, long time to come.

Such magazines feature homes, interiors ideas, furnishing suggestions and I can be inspired by something as direct as an advert. Just one picture can speak eons and if it works in my mind, I know it would work in the room too. Once I need further inspiration, a trip to the biggest newsagent in town can find me the richest, thickest interiors magazine on the shelf, and I’m ready to lap up the inspiration.

Now, things have changed somewhat because I tend to search inspiration on-line. A search for new bedroom look ideas leads me to search Images on the web. One fleeting image strikes me as intriguing. It belongs to an interview made with a fashion designer and shows her personal boudoir. Fine – I love the colour scheme, the eccentricity of the décor, the way those curtains are hung. I bookmark the page and move on. By the end of my search, I have confused myself to a certain extent, and my ‘Undo’ tab keeps working frantically until I find the page where the designer boudoir resided. But for some unfathomable reason, I have lost the link, the page, the picture. I tell myself I should have printed it….. and instantly I realise that, had it been printed on a magazine, I would have probably cut it out. Perhaps I could search for the print version of that interview….

I turn to search through the hundreds of interiors blogs and find the situation is somewhat more targeted. You search a blog for ‘bedrooms’ and hey presto, you’re met with anything and everything connected to the topic, at least where the better organised bloggers are concerned. Professional interiors blogs are a meticulous documentation in process. Each post is tagged accordingly so that a search takes you to specific places that may or may not be suitable for your enquiry. I like to visit varied bloggers time and again, and since most of them originate from far-flung countries, inspiration is as diverse as it comes.

The good thing about blogs is that once you discover a blogger who favours the kind of things you favour yourself, then you’ve found a like-hearted soul whose musings will tend to tug at your imagination strings with every post that’s posted. These blog writers will become vaguely akin to on-line allies who are there to share the most beautiful interiors, ideas, personality-run spaces. Deep down I tend to prefer this category of writer more than any other. If only on-line blogs could get printed… then of course I’d be back to paying a regular eyeball for all that paper. Which is why the Bookmark list on my computer has become so ridiculously long…..

This article was written by Marika Azzopardi, a freelance writer and journalist.  A frequent contributor to national English language papers and magazines, she writes about a bevy of topics including art, people and life in general. She is also the author of children’s books and short stories, delving into adult fiction from time to time.