Cosy, winter interior design ideas 1: pile on the plaid

This winter's interior design styles are all about mixing colours with natural materials and fabrics to make your home feel cosy and warm. Today we're going to take a look at using tartans and plaids in all styles of homes. Use plaids and tartan fabrics for upholstery and window dressing, if you use tartans which have been around quite literally for hundreds of years you'll find the colours muted and beautifully toned.

For example, muted red and green teamed with beige are the colours most people think of for tartans. If you really want to get the country manor look you could look up your ancestral past to see whether there's a tartan clan that your some way linked to, albeit very distant, and this will also help you to embrace another of this year's interior design trends of returning to your roots! Red, green and beige offer a chic colour scheme for living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms.

Look for curtain fabrics online in tartans and plaid fabrics to make your rooms feel cosy and warm. Make full length bedroom curtains and add a touch of class with gold coloured tassel tie-backs. Coordinate the room by using different coloured tartans and plaids for cushion covers, table runners and place settings. In the bedroom tartan bed throws will add warmth and a new look to bedrooms; again use different coloured tartans for accessories.

Don't be afraid to mix the plaids, they don't have to be matching to get the look. Allow for plenty of curtain fabric to give a fullness to your curtains, pencil pleat curtains are ideal as these will keep with theme of using tartan. Have you heard of the expression 'the whole nine yards'? This is believed to have originated from the wearing of tartan kilts, where nine yards of fabric was used to make one man's kilt!

Therefore, you need to ensure your curtains have plenty of fabric to make a generous series of pleats. You could also look at other styles of tartans and plaids. Modern tartan fabrics include strong and bright colours such as purple and greens, while ancient tartans are the more muted colours. Hunting tartans are predominately green, and natural colours. Weather tartans use very muted shades to give the fabric and old warn look – ideal if you have a shabby chic styles interior.