1. It has to live in a room first
Nothing gets recommended on the strength of a product page. Every object we write about has lived somewhere — our own rooms, or a reader’s — for at least a season. Where it has not, we say so in the article and mark the entry as assessed from specification rather than lived with. You will never have to guess which one you are reading.
2. We read the material, not the marketing
“Solid wood” can mean dowelled oak or glued finger-jointed offcuts, and the listing will not tell you which. So we check what the listing omits: joinery, finish, whether a “linen” curtain is linen or a linen-look polyester, whether a “stoneware” mug was actually thrown or slip-cast. Weight tells you a lot; so does the underside nobody photographs.
3. We price the owning, not the buying
A cheap rug that sheds is not cheap; a good chair reupholstered twice is not expensive. Every price we quote is the price we actually saw, with the date — and where something is permanently “on sale”, we say so. A lamp that has never sold at full price is not a bargain at 40% off; it is a lamp with a fictional original price.
4. We measure, and we say what we measured
Rooms have dimensions and objects have footprints, and the two only meet in millimetres. We give the real numbers — the usable depth of a shelf, the height of a bedside table against an average mattress, whether a “small-space” sofa actually fits through a 75cm doorway. Where a number is an estimate, it is labelled as one.
5. We say when the answer is nothing
This is the part that costs us money. A good share of our guides end with the conclusion that the best move is the one that buys nothing — keep the wall bare, use the jar you already own, leave the corner empty. We publish those anyway. A recommendation you cannot trust is worth less than no recommendation at all.
What we will not do
- We do not accept payment for coverage. No sponsored posts, no paid placement inside a guide, no brand approval of copy before publication.
- We do not rank by commission rate. Where two objects are close, we say they are close and tell you which to choose for which reason.
- We do not recommend a material we have not handled. If we have not touched it, sat on it, or scrubbed it, we do not write the guide.
- We do not use affiliate links inside editorial prose without marking them. Links to retailers go through a disclosed redirect.
How our links work
Retailer links route through our own redirect at /go, which shows you where you are going before it takes you there. It is not a tracker: it carries no analytics, and it shows the destination domain but not the path or parameters. Full details on the affiliate disclosure page.
Corrections
If a recommendation turns out to be wrong — a finish that marks, a fabric that pills, a retailer that changes its range — we update the article and note the date. Email editors@slowinteriors.com if we have missed one.