Home Tours with Secret Styling Club and The Idle Hands: inside Sandra Baker's maximalist Victorian home

From bold colour to heavily patterned wallpaper and fabrics, Sandra Baker's Yorkshire home is full of personality and bursting with bright statement furniture and eclectic treasures.

"It's a bit like your eccentric nana lived in it, intentionally," says Sandra of her Instagram account (@the_idle_hands), which has amassed more than 66,000 followers and documents the seven-year renovation of the Victorian house she shares with her husband and two children.

The home's fun fusion of glamorous and eccentric buys works beautifully with big, bold patterns and colours added to the large rooms - and contrasts with ornate period details throughout.

So, how can you create the same effect in your own home, even if you’ve got a much smaller footprint to play with?

Whether it’s a few cushions in clashing colours and patterns, or a chair in a statement fabric, keeping it to these small areas will allow you to get used to this dramatic scheme without feeling overwhelmed.

Then, once you’re feeling braver, you can add colourful wallpaper and paint to the mix and start experimenting with quirky accessories.

Although the elements of a maximalist scheme may seem unconnected, to keep the look well balanced find a link to tie the pieces together. This could be a colour or a pattern, a material or even the shape of furniture and accessories.

For example, in Sandra’s living room pops of bright pink feature in the footstool and are echoed in the tasselled pouffe, candlesticks and in some of the cushions. Then there’s the green sofa, which ties in with the greenery of the plants and a few other accessories.

Despite us telling you to find a connection to your pieces, you can also afford to mix materials in a way that you hadn’t considered before. Metallics don’t have to be either silver or gold – why not mix them up and add in some brass or copper, too?

And having one very strong print on the wall doesn’t mean you can’t add other patterns – clash modern geometrics with florals, stripes with spots.

If you want the drama to come from bold furniture choices and patterned upholstery, use your walls to create a solid base. Paint them all in one colour, along with the skirting, picture rails, coving and even the door and window frames – and you may want to paint the ceiling, too.

Alternatively, if you want to be brave with your paint choice, highlight these details by using a contrasting colour.

When it comes to displaying your treasures, buys and finds, it can be easy to fill every surface and the result, if not careful, can feel cluttered rather than interesting.

If you’re unsure, it’s worth grouping accessories together in dedicated areas – whether it’s a set of shelves, or on a table – rather than having something on every single surface space.

Make sure to get a good mix of heights, textures and materials to add visual interest, rather than having identical objects all sitting in a row like a line of soldiers.

Find Laurie and Maxine online at secretstylingclub.com or on Instagram at @secretstylingclub