Today’s EADT Aldeburgh supplement

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Dining room demise

I don’t think that it will surprise most of us the sales of dining room furniture are in decline. Smaller households, cafeteria style dining in the home and the rise of the television as the true focal point at dinner time have rendered dining room furniture almost obsolete in many houses across Britain. Indeed, according to research from Mintel, over the last five years alone sales of dining room furniture have declined by 8% to just £119 million this year. This decline defies the trend in other furniture markets such as home office furniture, where sales have risen by almost 40% since 2000 and bedroom furniture, which increased its sales by 37% over the same five year period.

“Today, dining rooms have become almost defunct as a place where a family enjoys an everyday meal together around the table. Scenes like those from the iconic OXO adverts featuring Lynda Bellingham, which ran for some 16 years, are now no longer a reflection of contemporary British family life and as a result have since been abandoned. Indeed, for many grazing or eating on the hoof have replaced meal times while for those who do sit down for dinner it is often merely a case of a ‘self service’ meal eaten on the lap in front of the television or a bite at a local eatery,” comments David Bird, senior market analyst at Mintel.

 

 

“But perhaps the most significant factor behind the continued decline of the dining room furniture market is the demise of the dining room itself. With the continued breakdown of traditional family models, rising divorce rates, later marriages and an ageing population more people are living alone. These smaller households are often converted properties or new builds, which often simply do not have a separate dining room and boast an open-plan living-dining-kitchen area,” adds David Bird.

For those who have a dining room it is usually kept only for formal occasions or has changed its function completely. Many have made it into a home office so that some consumers are now more likely to be found working on their laptop than eating at the dining room table. All this has contributed to the decline is sales of dining room furniture.

So, if you have an old dining room that you’d prefer to have as a home office or knock into an open plan kitchen – pop in and see us, we’re here to help.

You’ve heard of junk food; well now there’s junk sleep, too.

The BBC has reported that, according to a study by Ofcom, the average Briton now spends more time using technology than asleep. Those surveyed spent an average of eight hours and 41 minutes each day using media devices but only eight hours and 21 minutes sleeping. Of these devices, television is surprisingly resilient to the rise of alternatives such as smartphone and tablet: the average person in Britain still watches three hours and 52 minutes of TV per day.

However, 20% of time spent watching TV is done whilst using another media device. Those who use a second screen to comment on what they are viewing on the first are said to be ‘chatterboxing’: a term that was coined by TeleScope in 2012.

In 2013, TeleScope found that the percentage of children with a TV in their bedroom had fallen to 52% from 59% in the previous year. This trend is countered, though, by a sharp rise in the number of children with access to a tablet at home: up from 14% in 2012 to 42% in 2013.

So what is this tech addiction doing to our sleep? The Sleep Council coined the term ‘junk sleep’ back in 2007 to describe the adverse effects that gadgets are having on the quality of our kip. In a report in 2013, it revealed that a shocking 42% of men watched TV to wind down before sleep and 39% of people aged 16-24 used a laptop, tablet or social media last thing at night.

Sleep expert Dr Chris Idzikowski says: “What we are seeing is the emergence of Junk Sleep – that is sleep that is of neither the length nor quality that it should be in order to feed the brain with the rest it needs to perform properly. Unfortunately, sleep seems to be going the same way as junk food.”

The Sleep Council’s report certainly supports this advice, as 39% of those who watch television in bed sleep very poorly most nights, as do 16% of those who check their emails before going to sleep. By contrast 39% of people who are in the habit of reading before they go to sleep, sleep very well.

The message, then, is simple: if you want to sleep well then pick up a book and put down the tech! Or, pop in and see us, we’re here to help.

Daily Telegraph World’s 20 sexiest bathrooms

Spring bathroom makeover inspiration from the Daily Telegraph – click the pic to see their 20 sexiest bathrooms

Pop in and see us, we’re here to help.

New Autumn Bedroom?

House & Garden Bedroom makeover inspiration

Mylands of London

 

Don’t forget we offer a full range of Bespoke Paint from Mylands of London. Pop in and see us, we’re here to help.

Lock up your home office

Here in wonderful Suffolk we luxuriate in beautiful countryside, have great local great food and, on average, drier weather than most in the UK. Although the roads tend to dwindle as you head north, communications are pretty good. The region is served by road, rail, air and sea and broadband is rolling out. Suffolk County Council has committed to ensuring that by the end of 2015, every property in Suffolk has access to broadband speeds of at least two megabits per second (Mbps) while 85 per cent of homes and businesses will be able to benefit from superfast speeds (24 Mbps or more).

And of course we have BT camped here at Martlesham Heath (or, ‘near Anglia Factors’ as they tell visitors:-). Their research is market-leading and it was with interest that we noticed the Guardian article earlier this year ‘Many more of us will work from home – or a cafe – says BT futurologist‘ and we quote…..

“Millard’s office is BT’s research laboratory at Adastral Park in Suffolk, a pioneering centre for technology and telecommunications, where a scale model of BT’s global network is used to test the broadband kit developed by the group and its partners. About 10% of BT’s employees work from home, a fact that helps well over 90% of mothers at the company return to their jobs after maternity leave. However, 73% of BT staff are set up to work from anywhere, with laptop access to their company files.

Much of Millard’s work is about the future of offices and business meetings, and although we are now more mobile, video calling and conference calling have made travelling to meetings less of an imperative. BT, she says, has adapted Dolby surround-sound technology for conference calls and is currently researching its effectiveness……”

“Technology, of course, also has its drawbacks. The average person is interrupted every three minutes during their working day, according to the London Business School, and our plethora of gadgets have made for more disruptions. Interrupted tasks have been found to take twice as long to finish and contain twice as many errors as uninterrupted efforts: it can take between 12 and 20 minutes to resume a complex task after being interrupted.”

So, if you want a well connected office at home with a lock on the door to prevent interruptions pop in and see us – we’re here to help.

Are these new trends?

American website Style at Home spotted 5 trends for bathrooms in 2014. We don’t see these as particularly new and have been fitting many for a long time (maybe not so many black baths). Come and see us, we’re here to help.

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Granite worktops – let us do it!

If you ever needed convincing to use a professional, this video from YouTube shows you how to fit granite tops yourself!

Come and see us – we’re here to help!

Outdated kitchens & bathrooms a property turn-off

Our thanks to the price comparison site www.gocompare.com  who, a couple of days ago, published a survey of the top 20 property turn-offs for potential buyers:-

Rank	20 Top Property turn-offs	%
1	Damp patches, stained walls and ceilings	70
2	Property in poor state of repair e.g. rotten windows	63
3	No garden	57
4	Bad smells, including odours from pets, cigarette smoke, damp and food	56
5	No parking	56
6	Poor natural light, dark rooms	54
7	Unfinished building work	54
8	Small rooms	51
9	Small kitchen	44
10	Bad DIY	43
11	Dirty house	37
12	Stone cladding, render or pebble dash on outside walls	31
13	Outdated bathroom	25
14	Outdated kitchen	25
15	Artex or textured ceilings	18
16	Plastic windows	18
17	Overgrown garden	16
18	General untidiness	16
19	Cluttered rooms	15
20	Dated or over the top décor	14

To avoid this sales nightmare we would be pleased to quote for a full or partial refurbishment of your current kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, home office or home cinema. Beware however – when we’ve finished you won’t want to leave!

Lefroy Brooks – our amazing new bathroom fittings

You need to come in to the showroom to see the amazing new range of bathroom fittings we are displaying, they are really good quality stylish bathroom fittings, I promise you will want them when you see them!

Here is a snap shot but come in to the showroom soon and see the real thing for yourself.