VERANDA is a premier source for extraordinary design, offering top-notch decorating, outdoor living, luxury travel, and lifestyle content. With leading worldwide designers providing ideas and tips to elevate both the look and feel of your home. Whether it’s reviving your living space or choosing the perfect paint colour, you’ll find your solution here.
To learn more about the magazine and its editorial mission read our interview with Editor in Chief Steele Marcoux.
For some of our UK followers who might not have read VERANDA before, could you tell us about the magazine and your editorial mission?
SM: VERANDA is where exceptional taste lives. By delivering style, home, garden, entertaining, art, and travel content through a sophisticated and authoritative lens, VERANDA invites a community of highly engaged readers to celebrate the joy in beautiful living, from design and decorating to entertaining, travel, and personal style.
You’ve just released your British Issue in print. What is is about British design & style that you think your readers love?
SM: It seems British Isles style is a perennial fount of inspiration – for the companies we cover, for our editors, and for our readers. There are loads of explanations for this, and I think it’s a mix of all. There’s the invigorating proclivity for exuberance in colour and pattern. There’s the charming appreciation for all things old, and old-fashioned. There’s the understanding that craft heritage often holds the keys to design innovation. And, of course, there’s the undeniable romance of castles and manors. Perhaps most importantly: there’s the soul-stirring connection between nature, art, and design – a long-established conversation between natural beauty and human creativity.
Who are some of your favourite British names and brands from the design industry?
SM: Oh, too many to count! Where do I even begin? Christopher Farr Cloth, Madeaux, Robert Kime, Penny Morrison – just to name a few. But honestly – every brand in our issue!! We love Jamb, Soane, Willow Pottery, Avena Carpets, Thorp, Studio Amos, Sanderson, Oka, Edward Bulmer, I could go on…
Which has been one of your favourite British interior design projects that you’ve featured recently?
SM: I am really thrilled about the mix featured in our current issue – including (perhaps especially) the home of Mary Graham, one half of Salvesen Graham. These designers are super exciting to me right now! We also have some exciting shoots on the books with British design firms… and it seems this issue has helped us open some doors for us with British design firms. Personally, I really love Rose Uniacke, always and forever.
Your digital theme for September is around art & colour – why did you select this as a theme and what can readers expect to find online? And what can we expect for the next few months online?
SM: Part of why we chose this theme is that our audience views us as an authority on all things colour. It’s one of the two most successful topics for us on veranda.com. This year, we have just unveiled our own 2024 Colour of the Year: Electric Amber and we’re so excited to see how well this has been received.
We’ve worked with VERANDA on an exclusive lesson extract from Kate Watson-Smyth’s Create Academy course – ‘How To Find Your Red Thread’. What was it about this that appealed to you and what did you enjoy about Kate’s approach to colour and design?
SM: We were all captivated by Kate Watson-Smyth’s approach to colour and design right away. Her advice bridges that oh-so-difficult gap of being extremely well-informed but also easy to follow. She just makes sense, and you find yourself feeling informed and empowered after you watch. Personally, I love her advice on choosing a “disruptor colour.” Mine is definitely yellow!
Have you any other favourites from the Create Academy collection of lessons we have available?
SM: I am a huge fan of Rita Konig’s, and also of Nina Campbell’s (the first “good” fabric I ever bought was Nina Campbell). I also really love Dan Pearson’s ‘Naturalistic Garden Masterclass’, and I love love love the Land Gardeners’ ‘A Year of Cut Flowers’ and Willow Crossley’s ‘Floristry Masterclass’.
