Why It’s Time to Give Your Cupboards, Wardrobes, and Doors a Facelift

A well-known interior designer once said to me: “My dear boy, first impressions are everything—but the devil’s in the details.” And in my opinion, when it comes to decorating or furnishing your home, truer words were never spoken: Detail is, quite literally, everything. From the silk tassels on a tiny scatter cushion to a carefully sourced wrought iron toilet roll holder, you can tell a lot about a person’s taste by the seemingly insignificant minutiae of their décor—and believe me, those smallest of details can leave the greatest impressions.

I remember poking around Habitat with my mum as a kid—I can’t have been older than 10 or 11—and while she was browsing the bed linen, she picked up a gray jersey cotton stripy number. I shouted something like, “Oh no mum, not that one! It wouldn’t go in your bedroom at all. Come look at this one over here—it’s got actual wooden buttons.” So there you go: a keen eye for detail even back then. But fear not, this is not a column about early-noughties bed linen. Or my childhood, for that matter.

Roll on 24 years to the present day, and with the New Year now firmly upon us, what better excuse is there to fine-tune the interior decor details of your home? And to my mind, there is no way to demonstrate your flair and panache than by refreshing your door furniture. Be they large or small, with a simple turn of the screw—and a little spit and polish—you can go from drab to fab in a jiffy.