The Ethos Behind Verde: Finding Everyday Joy
Our number one drive is curating a series of beautiful homewares, clothing, pots, plants, & gifts that can help you achieve a styling ethos of beauty and bring you joyfulness every day. It's easy to be swayed by constant design trends - which certainly isn't always a bad thing - but keeping a sense of personal style and sticking to it is really important for creating and tailoring a space that's perfect for you, your family and your home. Here at Verde, we have a strong ethos for which pieces make it into store, based on a meticulous criteria of sustainability, beauty, functionality, a bit of quirkiness, and that special something that makes your heart sing and your eyes light up. We've put together a rundown of how we choose our products so that you can be confident in the knowledge that we've checked it all out first when you purchase a piece or buy a gift for someone. We're hoping it will help you get to know us better, and that we can inspire you to adopt some of these criteria when it comes to picking pieces for your own space and lifestyle.
We believe in choosing pieces that last - buying well, buying classic, and buying what you love. We also put a big focus on the materials that go into making our favourite pieces, especially for furniture or larger home items like rugs and doormats. Many of our furniture pieces are made from recycled materials, such as the recycled elm stools which you can find in either a round or rectangular version. Recycled elm is a reclaimed timber that is repaired and polished to give a rustic, charming finish, and its recycled nature results in less timber being felled, slowing the process of the timber industry and giving forests more time to recover after their trees have been chopped down. We really want to consider where our materials are coming from, and how those materials impact the world. Plus, we want to make sure we're choosing items that are made from the highest of quality, to ensure that they last for as long as possible. Doing a little bit of research into the materials that go into a piece you're considering buying can be a bit tedious or daunting, but we find it can be well worth doing, especially if you're buying a bigger or more expensive piece that you're hoping to hold on to for a long time to come.
Our philosophy on choosing pieces could be boiled down to a simple question - if it's not beautiful, why have it? It seems useless to us to bring things into our homes that we do not like to look at, don't make us smile or is something we wouldn't want to show off. We spend so much time at home, especially now, and it is essential that we enjoy our space as much as possible, which partially means making it as beautiful as possible. Pieces that catch your eye with interesting and beautiful patterns, colours, or textures are joyful additions to your space. Depending on your personal style, you might want to consider the other pieces you already have when choosing new ones, and consider if the colours and textures of the incoming pieces will match or complement those you already have. Of course, you can always lean into a more eclectic and vibrant style, and choose things whether you feel they strictly match or not. As long as you find a piece beautiful, it is usually worth taking home with you - so it genuinely will give you joy everyday.
While beauty is essential, another important caveat of choosing pieces is to choose them for functionality. This can of course vary wildly from space to space, and what is functional for one person may not be for another! A bedside table with drawers for instance can be a beautiful piece, but if you don't keep anything in the drawers, then it's not serving as a functional piece. Of course, the opposite could be true - you may love the minimalist look of a more simple bedside table, but might need the drawers to hide things away! This is a personal test of functionality that you may need to apply to any new pieces you are considering - is this piece going to serve the purpose you need it to? But there is also a more general kind of test - is this piece going to serve the purpose it was intended to? Some things are designed to be only beautiful without fulfilling any other intended purpose, or to be only functional without being beautiful, but we firmly believe in choosing items that are designed with both beauty and functionality in mind (they do exist!). A perfect example of this for us is the range of Japanese ceramics that we have instore and online, which we just can't get enough of. They're handmade, hand-glazed, and absolutely divine. They're also dishwasher and microwave safe, making them practical for everyday use in the home. They flawlessly combine the beauty of a handmade object with the functionality of dinnerware in a modern home. What could be better than that?
There's something in everyone's style that is wholly unique and individual. We love our pieces to reflect a personal uniqueness, and to give a little sense of that distinctive feeling when you own them that they were made just for you. For us, it's sometimes something that makes us laugh - like this bum vase - or sometimes something that speaks to our own personal quirks, or sense of fun and colour.
Our homes, offices, and every space we spend time in should be spaces of joy - and choosing beautiful pieces is part of creating a space you can feel joyful in. It's also important just to choose things you love. The pieces you select for your home don't need to necessarily follow current trends or styles, they just need to set off that twinkle in your eye and the lightness in your heart. We call this everyday joy and we really want to help you achieve this with the pieces you choose from us. This could mean only going for pieces that form a cohesive, stylistic whole in your home, but it could also mean choosing pieces you love that may clash a little! Sometimes we have a hard time picking between the two. A good way to balance it out if you find yourself gravitating towards very different pieces is to place similar items together in certain rooms. You can create a different mood in each space, and still keep a cohesive feeling - which means you get the best of both, joyful worlds.
We hope you know us and our ethos a little better now, and we look forward to seeing you instore to help you find everyday and special pieces that bring beauty and joy to your life.
