Coastal calm: bringing a seaside feel into your new home
There's a particular ease to living by the sea, and it comes as much from the light and the air as the view. It's one of the quiet pleasures of our new build homes in Kent, which sit right by the coast: Shurland Park at Minster on Sea on the Isle of Sheppey, and Abbots Grange on the Hoo Peninsula. Both put the water, the open skies and the sea air on your doorstep, and both make a lovely setting for a relaxed, coastal look indoors.
Done well, that look has nothing to do with seaside clichés. Here's some ideas on how to bring it into a home of your own.
Start with the light
The biggest thing a coastal home has going for it is light, and a new build gives you plenty to work with. Our new build homes in Kent are designed to make the most of natural light, so the daylight has room to move. The trick is not to fight it: keep window dressings light, sheer linen rather than heavy curtains, and let a soft, chalky white on the walls bounce it around. A large mirror opposite a window will effectively double it. On the Kent coast, where the light shifts all day, a room set up this way never looks quite the same twice.
A palette drawn from the Kent coast
Coastal colour is at its best when it is muted rather than nautical. In place of primary blue and red, take your cue from the true colours of the shore near Minster on Sea and the Hoo Peninsula: the grey-greens of marram grass, the warm sand and shell tones of the beach, the soft blues of sea and sky. Begin with off-white and warm neutrals, then introduce one or two of those tones through cushions, throws or a single considered feature wall. Against the pale walls and natural light of our new builds in Kent, the result is unmistakably coastal, yet always restrained.
Layer in natural texture
Coastal interiors feel relaxed because they are rich in natural, tactile materials. Linen and cotton for softness, rattan or cane for structure, timber in a pale, limed or weathered finish. A jute rug, a ceramic lamp base, a turned wooden bowl: each is quiet in itself, yet together they create an easy, lived-in warmth. Texture is also what keeps a pale, light-filled room from feeling cold, which matters in the open, airy rooms of our new builds in Kent.
Bring the coast indoors
The finest coastal homes blur the line between inside and out, something that comes naturally when the shore is a short walk away. Frame the garden or the view, arrange the seating to make the most of it, and allow a window seat its place. A few grasses, a jug of stems, perhaps a piece of driftwood gathered on a walk, and the room feels connected to the landscape beyond. With the beach at Minster on Sea close at hand, it is one of the genuine pleasures of our new build homes in Minster on Sea.
New build homes by the Kent coast
That sense of calm is central to the appeal of a coastal home, and it is what our Southern developments are built around. At Shurland Park you will find new build homes in Minster on Sea, moments from the beach and the island's wide skies; at Abbots Grange, new build homes in Hoo St Werburgh are set within the quiet marsh-and-river landscape of the peninsula.
Both are light, generously proportioned and ready to be made your own, and like the best of our new builds in Kent, they are finished to the standard you would expect of a Jones home: a considered, elegant backdrop for a coastal palette entirely of your choosing.
Discover our new homes for sale in Kent at Shurland Park and Abbots Grange, and begin to picture a coastal calm of your own.
