Revealed: Interior designers' secrets to a budget home refresh

Spoiler alert: These two tips are also cost-effective and involve rethinking the use of furniture you may already have

Bo Concept’s Santiago sideboard is a streamlined contemporary design, softened by rounded corners with ample surface for styling.

Those of us more artisan than artistic often cut our creative teeth at home with an attempt at styling, and there’s no better place to compile vignettes of vases, candleholders and piles of glossy interior design books than on a sideboard or coffee table.

Sideboards have evolved and they’re no longer just part of a dining room furniture set, says interior designer and stylist Catherine O’Flynn of Catherine O’Flynn Interiors: “They are now in living rooms often seen behind sofas displaying our record players and vinyl collection in open-plan areas, incorporated into our kitchens for extra storage, adding presence to larger hallways and, of course, the all-important drinks’ cabinet.”