House in Ham, Surrey

This client called me initially to ask about the products I had used in a bathroom she had seen in a magazine. Because all these items were bespoke, she then asked me to work on the interior design of her whole house. The living/ dining room was long and narrow, so creating a pleasing furniture layout was a challenge. I designed every piece of furniture, including a shaped coffee table with the same shape reflected in the rug below it. This then determined the angle of the sofa, which in turn made the room layout flow more gracefully.

The starting point with the colour scheme was a bright magenta pink and a cyan blue which the client loved, so these were incorporated throughout the scheme including within one of the commissioned abstract paintings by Dillwyn Smith. The original rather oddly proportioned brick fireplace needed replacing, so I designed a new one in Portland stone, but because of the restrictive height of the existing flue, I added a stone shelf above it to create a mantelpiece at a more pleasing height.

The rest of the house continued in an opulent but modern style, apart from the master bedroom and en-suite bathroom, where the client wanted a more classically romantic feel.

This was achieved by using swathes of organza fabric over the bed, whilst the furniture and wardrobes etc. were painted ornately in the antique gold and dark purple colour of the fabrics. I then designed wall panelling for the bottom half of the en-suite bathroom wall, which was then painted in vertical stripes to imitate precisely the room’s dress curtain fabric.