Christmas House Tour

Vanessa MacInnes of cool interiors store, Industry, takes us on a tour of a her fabulously festive pad…

Describe your Christmas decorating style? My Christmas decor style is quite simple and as I do the buying for Industry I obviously love the Industry Christmas decorations! I don’t like an abundance of colour and tend to veer more towards natural materials using wood, glass, wool, fresh berries and fruit, and a simple colour scheme of red, white and silver (although I am not strict on that!) I use brown paper to wrap gifts and either bakers twine or strips of linen as ribbons. I love soft warm light and old fashioned fairy lights; I always think that it’s the lighting that makes the house feel Christmassy.

What’s your Christmas day like? I have a large family and 2 beautiful nephews who get all the attention on Christmas day. We all go to my parents? house and start off with a big cooked breakfast. We chill out and continue eating for the rest of the day. We end up chatting at the dining table ?til all hours of the evening.

Do you prefer being a visitor or a hostess? I love having people over but with the expansion of the store I don’t have much time at the moment. I would say I prefer to be host but at the moment I am more of a visitor.

Who does the cooking? Both myself and my boyfriend John both love to cook, but John gets home earlier in the evening than I do and I am spoilt by having dinner on the table most evenings when I arrive home! On Christmas day my mum does the cooking but we all pitch in.

When do you open presents? We have a tradition in our family than we don’t open the presents under the tree until after dinner. At that stage we have all had a few glasses of wine and it seems more fun. ?Although as a child it wasn’t so great, we would get our Santa presents in the morning but knowing there was more to come made getting through the day a challenge.

Any particular traditions that you like to keep? Other than opening gifts after dinner nothing in particular although my Dad still insists on making trifle every year even though he is generally the only one eating it!

Do you prefer Christmas or New Year? Definitely Christmas! I never really do much on New Years Eve and love being around the family on Christmas Day.

What are you hoping Santa has in store for you? A kitten!!

@elliebalfe @industrydesign