Brights

Carol O’Callaghan throws away the iron and welcomes easy care linens in optimistic summer colours

Abandon the ironing board, it’s now officially out of fashion, so all you aficionados of gleaming white starched bed linens who have been enslaved to the pressing of wrinkles from plain white quilt covers can now luxuriate in the freedom of a more fashionably crumpled look. No more strict hospital corners required but loose fluffy lines and an overall relaxed approach to linens. Just make sure if you have an all-white linen arrangement on the bed that everything — pillowcases, sheets and quilt — is bought at the same time and washed together to ensure continuity of shade.

Supporting this relaxed approach is a look back at nostalgia and the revival of lace. Yes, lace, that fabric so beloved by curtain twitchers of yore, allowing a quick snoop while concealing the snooper, and the decoration of choice of Jane Austen’s heroines who might pass a quietly genteel day stitching a ribbon of it on a jaded bonnet before a trip to town to flirt with the local militia.