Interiors with Sarah Jane Nielsen, owner and director of Sarah Jane Nielsen Limited, at Staveley.

What are the Trends for 2014? we are often asked. They are all out there. Take your pick. What we and other designers give you is our interpretation of those trends. Our preferences as to suggested colour palettes and style. As with everything, you can choose to ignore or develop those suggestions. It’s just that we have more experience in the likelihood of something catching on or being considered ‘good design.

The magazine shelves are full of last year’s prediction for colour and style in 2014. This is the amazing thing, predictions, just like magazine editorials happen long before you read them, so where do your influences come from?

I often wonder how long our subconscious takes to develop an idea or thought. Where did I first see that shape of light fitting or that tone of salmon pink?

I am also a firm believer that there is very little evidence of totally new design. After all, design, like fashion or the economy is cyclical. It comes around, again and again, just in slightly different forms, or shades or styles. With or without more impact. For me the most mind blowing design is in nature. How were the intricate details of that flower or butterfly ever conceived?

I know that’s a big one, but I don’t think the colour fuchsia was conceived before the flower. Or was it?

What I do admire and appreciate as innovative design is product designers and design engineers taking from nature and producing the most incredible forms. Practical, as well as attractive. That’s the difficult bit. Not, just cars, yachts, airplanes and buildings like those by Zaha Hadid, who is obviously exceptional. This year we have seen amazing fabrics, furnishings and light fittings out in the market place through progressive manufacturers, willing to make the investment on fresh design outlook.

Pollack, a New York based fabric company have taken beautiful sculptures and forms from jewellery, furniture designers and ceramicists and produced a fabric range oozing texture and fine intricate detailing (available from Altfield UK). Our friend Philippe Stark now has a few contemporary follower’s on with Patricia Urquiola designing sanitary ware, available to us all. Not to mention the array of furniture and home ware designers coming out of Scandinavia through outlets like Skandium. Georg Jensen, Ron Arad and Alto to mention a few.

Ever evolving and developing, the interior design world is out there to offer us all insight into what is actually available for our own consumption and benefit. Fascinating isn’t it? All it takes is one’s own interest, enthusiasm and courage to take a designer’s lead.