On Trend - creating a sense of summer indoors

IT’S time for summer entertaining, and even if we’re still frozen stiff we can muster a sense of summer indoors.

White — a must-have in the minimalist Noughties — never went out of fashion. It’s the perfect blank canvas on which to build a spring and summer table look that has the sense of warmth and light of the season, if you can recall what that feels like.

Think white table cloths to show off your beautiful, colourful plates and bowls, and a vibrant floral arrangement. They’re traditional and elegant and give the sense of a special event.

Or ring the changes with a tablecloth in a favourite colour from the spring garden. With everything blooming so late this year it will be refreshing to try to imitate it indoors for the time being. Consider pinks that range from pale carnation to deeper petunia, or the green of fresh shoots. Both make a beautiful backdrop to gleaming white table wares.

If you want to be bang on trend the new one is a ‘80s revival combining green and pink. Not to everyone’s taste mind you, but as it seeps into shop displays it’s guaranteed to become more acceptable, and as a summer look I have to say it works if applied subtly.

To give it a go check out Meadows & Byrne’s Emily wares with petal patterning in dusky pink, adding a napkin in pale green or in white with green detailing. It’s an informal look that really is the way to go with summer entertaining, keeping formal and fancy for very special occasions.

Delicate detailing is also trending in tableware with sprigs and abstract florals. It’s confined to the side or outside rim of plates and bowls so it won’t mar your culinary presentations.

Another product to watch out for comes from Paul Costelloe for Dunnes Stores. He’s using Morocco as his inspiration for a terracotta based range. Admittedly, terracotta can be a bit on the clunky side to eat from — although it works very well in oven to table ware — and is probably too rustic generally for entertaining. But Costelloe’s Casablanca range is glazed inside with white and delicate blue detailing that speaks of the Yves St Laurent garden in Marrakech where vivid blue and brilliant white are the perfect foil for oppressive heat and ever present flies. Not that this is a problem for us, or likely to be so for the foreseeable future. Worse luck.

When it comes to linen accessories it’s hard to beat cloth napkins, and the Swedes as usual are offering that perfect combination of simple but chic. Linum’s new spring and summer range offers nautical blues and young greens in napkins, cloths and runners.

Admittedly, paper napkins are labour saving but for a planned lunch or supper with friends it’s worth getting out the iron and freshening up what you already have.

If they’re on the shabby side you can transform them with something as simple as tying them with a piece of ribbon to act like a napkin ring in a colour picked up from the rest of the table or the room. Even a length of old fashioned twine tied in a bow looks stylish and of the moment.

* Next week we move spring and summer entertaining outdoors.