what is interior styling?

Have you ever looked through an interior magazine and wondered how the people who own these homes keep them looking so photograph-ready?

Well, hate to burst the illusion but, they don’t. Yes, some people have beautiful homes that are kept pristine and always have that perfectly laid out pile of magazines on their coffee table or that half-eaten cupcake casually laying on the kitchen side that still looks delicious, but there is a difference between styling a room for the general presentation of it and styling it through the view-finder of a camera.

The stylist’s job varies depending on whether their work is editorial, commercial or in the area of press shows, but the general idea is that it’s down to the stylist to show a room in the best possible way; sourcing products or using available products to put the right image together for the magazine or the company catalogue etc.

My main area of interest is editorial. I love the magazines. I love the real homes and the idea of working with something someone else has created to produce achingly perfect images of homes that others will lust after. I love flitting about flea markets for good finds, or seeing something that has the potential to become something else – and I can spend hours on Pinterest looking at crafty ideas and creative ways to display or store things and I am forever rearranging my dressing table or coming up with new place settings. All of these ‘hobbies’ have built up a catalogue of ideas that I could use on the set of a shoot as a stylist. And that’s what it’s about. It’s seeing things in a different way, a way that can relate through a lens and onto the pages of a glossy interiors mag or the appropriate section of a weekend broadsheet supplement.

This image from stylist Lucyina Moodie looks effortless. It looks like the house of a family ready to share breakfast together. But everything from the number of plates on the table to the angle of the stool to how far open the door is, has been thought about.