Our trainee stylist Emmaly Stewart styled this image for The Dharma Door featureunder the expert supervision of Adam Powell and photographer Natalie Hunfalvay. Karen McCartney writes about the art of styling for sale.

Styling our images is a finely tuned art. They have to be beautiful and appealing but also balance artistry and design sense with real actionable ideas and clever detailing.

As well as our resident team of the very talented Jessica Bellef and Adam Powell, Temple & Webster has been working with two studio trainees over the past month. Emmaly Stewart and Thomas House have not only been unpacking boxes and painting backdrops, but have this week turned their hand to styling a set under the guidance of the experts.

Emmaly recently graduated from the Enmore Design Centre where her focus included transforming a space using permanent changes like moving walls. "I've always been a very hands-on person, designing and making objects, merchandising in a retail store and redecorating my house every week to suit my new finds," she says. "The idea of changing the feeling of a space with paint, furniture & beautiful homewares is really exciting."


Emmaly discusses her concept with Adam Powell.

For the Dharma Door shoot, Adam briefed Emmaly on how to research the shoot – looking at multiple ideas for storage solutions the Dharma Door baskets could deliver, and also thinking about how people live and how the styling plan might best come together.

Emmaly explains: "Creating a backdrop of a spare room that had clean lines and crisp colours seemed the obvious option when highlighting the storage baskets. I was after a Scandinavian feel with lots of white and bright and the right amount of light and colour."


Emmaly setting up the shot, with a shelf unit and floating shelf from Ikea and a potted fiddle leaf fig in a The Dharma Door basket. The backdrop was painted in Murobond's 'Dovetail'.

"The ideas for the colour scheme came from looking at the range from The Dharma Door and choosing the strong blue as a centerpiece. Emily brought a feminine touch with the pops of pink and tangerine", said Adam.


Emmaly and Adam set up for the landscape format image which appears on our sale page and in our daily email.

The overall scheme managed to cover seven different products, and suggest different uses, while still maintaining a beautiful easy-on-the-eye set up.

"I sketched as we spoke about props, colours and  larger pieces of furniture," said Emmaly.  "The bookcase cast dark shadows when close to the lighting so we flipped the plan and moved it to the other side to minimise the shadows. When the shot was taken, it was crazy to see the final image was my sketch mirrored."


Emmaly applying the finishing touches. Her clever arrangement means the eye moves diagonally down over the artworks and antlers to the pool of light cast by the lamp, and The Dharma Door baskets.

How did Emmaly feel about the shot? "I'm so happy with the final result. Adam's fiddle leaf fig topped the image off – now I need the white patterned hessian draw string basket to go around my future fiddle leaf!"

And what did Adam feel Emmaly brought to the project? 'She has spent years fossicking in charity shops and has a really good eye for the quirky object that makes a set playful and charming'.