Gift guides
Housewarming gift ideas that won’t end up in a charity shop.
Nine gifts I’ve given or been given that earned their place in the new house. Considered, useful, and not the candle they already have three of.
The honest problem with housewarming gifts is that everyone is buying the same five things. A candle. A bottle of something. A picture frame. A box of chocolates. A set of nice tea towels. By the time the new owners are unpacking the third box, the kitchen counter is a graveyard of well-meaning sameness, and the candle goes in a drawer, and within six months it is in a charity shop with the wax untouched.
The gifts that survive are the ones where someone asked themselves a small, specific question: what does this person not yet have, in this house, that would make a Tuesday evening better? The answer is rarely a candle. It is usually a thing that anchors a room, or that gives them an evening, or that helps them notice where they live. Below are nine that I have either given or been given. None of them are perfect for everyone. Most of them are under £50.
1. A bottle of olive oil from a single farm.
The first cooking they will do in the new kitchen will be on a half-unpacked stove, in a pan they have not yet found a home for. A good olive oil is the small piece of luxury that turns scrambled eggs on toast into something. Belazu sells single-estate Italian and Greek bottles around the £18–£25 mark; Odysea does Cretan single-estate at the same price point. Either feels far more thoughtful than the price tag suggests, and it gets used in the first week.
The trick is to write a small card — this is the one you cook with, this is the one you finish things with — because most people who do not already buy good oil do not know that there are two kinds. They will use it within three weeks. Nothing goes in a drawer.
2. A Welsh wool throw.
If you can stretch the budget, this is the gift that becomes the sofa. Melin Tregwynt in Pembrokeshire has been weaving since 1912; their throws are heavy, geometrically patterned, and indistinguishable from heirlooms after a winter of use. Tweedmill sits a notch cheaper at around £60–£90 with the same Welsh-mill provenance. The point of either is that it is the thing they will be on, under, or near, every evening for the next decade. Most housewarming gifts cannot make that claim.
3. A walking book routed from their front door.
This is the gift I make and sell, so take it with the bias warning. But the reason I started doing it is that almost every move — mine, my friends’, my parents’ — comes with the same first-weekend question: what is around here, actually? The mapping apps will tell you the obvious answer; they will not tell you the small loop that goes past the church and back through the field that has the donkey in it. A printed book of ten walks, drawn fresh from one address, with their name on the cover, is the answer to the first-Saturday-morning question. It also has the practical advantage of being the only thing on this list that they cannot already buy themselves — the book is generated against their postcode the moment you order it.
I send it within seven working days, A5 paperback, perfect-bound, and I refund if the address can’t support three real walks (some can’t; I won’t print a book that lies). It works best for the recipient who has just moved out of a city, or into a village, or anywhere they don’t yet know what is over the hedge. Try it on their postcode — the demo is free and you can see the book before paying.
4. A doormat with their surname on it.
The half-naff one that turns out to be loved. Coir is hardy, takes ten years of weather, and the small daily moment of seeing your own surname underfoot when you arrive home is genuinely good. Eat My Mat and Coir Mats UK both do custom-stencilled mats in the £30 range. The one rule: stick to the surname, not a phrase. The Hendersons is fine; Live, Laugh, Love is the candle in the drawer.
5. A subscription to a record-of-the-month from a small label.
The gift that arrives twelve times. Norman Records in Leeds runs a curated subscription; Vinyl Me Please is the bigger US-based version with broader genre tracks. Three months is more than enough — gives them three Saturday-morning unboxings, builds them a small collection without committing them to a year. If they don’t already have a record player it is, of course, the wrong gift; the move is the right time to ask before buying.
6. A houseplant with a long history.
The best houseplant gift is a rooted cutting from one of yours, in a clay pot, with a small note: the parent of this is from my grandmother’s flat in 1996. It costs nothing and outlives almost everything else in the house. If you don’t have a parent plant to root, Patch sell mature olive trees and figs in the £40 range that are old enough to be characterful. Avoid: succulents (they all die), orchids (everyone gives orchids), anything with the word statement in the marketing copy.
7. An A2 print of the Ordnance Survey map for their address, framed.
A surprisingly emotional gift, especially for the move that crosses a county or a country. Ordnance Survey themselves sell custom Explorer-series prints centred on any address you give them, from £30 unframed; a black or oak A2 frame from framing.co.uk takes it to around £90. Hangs in the hallway. Becomes the thing every visitor stops to look at — oh, you’re right next to that footpath.
8. A hand-bound notebook in something serious.
The gift for the friend who has just moved into a house with a project list as long as their arm. Smythson at the top end (their featherweight Panama paper is the best paper money can buy); Stálogy from Japan around the £20 mark for something cheaper but properly nice. A notebook is the rare gift that is both perfectly useful and never urgent — the recipient gets to decide when to start it, which is part of the small pleasure.
9. The first dinner.
The most useful housewarming gift on this list, which is also the least poetic. On the evening they move in — the boxes are everywhere, the kitchen knife is somewhere — a takeaway gift card for the local Indian or Vietnamese place is exactly what they need. Most local restaurants will sell you a paper voucher if you walk in and ask; Deliveroo and Uber Eats both do gift cards at any value if you don’t know the area. Send it the morning of the move, with a one-line text: this is your dinner tonight; you are not cooking.
How to choose, when in doubt.
The honest answer is to ask yourself one question before you buy: will this still be in their house in five years? If the honest answer is no, the gift is probably the candle. The list above is biased toward things that earn five years — either by being used (oil, throw, mat, notebook), or by being looked at (map, plant, book), or by giving them an evening (record, dinner). None of them are showy. All of them have a small, specific reason for being in the house.
If you don’t know the recipient’s taste well, default to the things on this list that don’t require taste at all: the oil, the dinner, the walking book, the doormat. They cannot misfire. The candle, the throw, and the records all need a tiny piece of personal knowledge to land.
And if the budget is tight, the rooted cutting and a hand-written note about where the parent plant came from is, year-on-year, the gift my friends remember best. It does not look like much. It costs nothing. It outlives the house.
A note on the third gift on this list
The walking book is the one I make.
If you’d like to see what it would look like for the person you’re buying for, type their postcode into the demo on the homepage. The book draws ten walks fresh from their address, in about a minute, and you see the cover and the first walk before you decide. It costs £39, posted within seven working days, with a full refund if the address can’t support three real walks.