I loved this scheme I installed recently for a clients Guest Bedroom, I wanted to create a feeling of calm but still use a bold pop of colour, in this case Coral.

The blue silk effect wallpaper by Jane Churchill gives a cosy addition to the room and for me resembles a fresh spring sky perfect for dozing off to. Sometimes it can be scary to clash patterns together but if used on the right elements of the room it can be quite effective. The Rapture and Wright headboard fabric I used ties the three colours in the room together which I find gives the room a nice flow.

All in all the bedroom is now somewhere enjoyed by many Guests

This piece of art was made by Marcus Wells and is totally unique. I sent Marcus samples of the colour scheme I had agreed with my client for him to match perfectly the handmade butterflies, with a few extras thrown in!

There are over 1000 Butterflies in this piece and Marcus suggested a perspex box with clear back so they really stood out and almost appeared to be flying out of the wall.

I couldn’t of been happier at how it turned out and it totally made the room! The beauty of them is they can be totally tailored to any room colour and size - I think I want one in every room!

Bora Bora is definitely my new found heaven on earth!

Such a stunning island with wonderful people, colours, pattern and food. I loved exploring the island with all its wonders, particularly the snorkelling where the array of fish and sea creatures had the most exquisite patterns and colours, like nothing else I had seen before.

The waters were crystal clear and staying in one of the Four Seasons Overwater Bungalows meant I could leap into it as soon as I woke up! It was a culture I have wanted to visit for some time and I just loved everything I saw. Some of these images show some of the details I documented that I felt could make interesting designs for interiors say on lampshades or cushions, they are definitely something I am going to develop further.

The problem is now…was it all just a dream??!!

Mauruuru

I loved working on this informal dining space for a client. Before the room was completely bare other than a console table and mirror and so it was pretty much a blank canvas to work with, which I find pretty exciting!

The brief was the need for a dining space inviting enough to enjoy entertaining whilst also being comfortable enough to say read a paper at or send some emails etc.

I decided the best way to achieve this was to design a built in bench seating and upholstered it with a fluted back which provides comfort and support whilst also looking rather smart. I wanted to add contemporary panelling on either sides of the room to make it feel cosier with the room having such a high ceiling and I brought the same colour through as what is on then kitchen units, with the rooms being partially open plan. The pops of colours came about from the gorgeous glass vases my client already had and the change of fabrics on each Tom Faulkner chair…well who doesn’t want a surprise every so often!

My client on this project loves Monkey’s and what better way I thought to bring this into the house than this beautiful Cole and Son wallpaper from the Ardmore range!

The cheeky monkeys steal the berries on this linear paper, which also helped to give the room height. I put an almost tribal geometric fabric on the blind in a coral colour to bring out the colour of the berries and did one of my favourite things…double trim!! The shells help to give a nod to this room being a washroom and add another fun element.

This is a close up of the beautiful Matilda Lamp by William Yeoward!

The glass lamp base is mouth blown in the UK with each of the crystal swirls making each lamp totally unique and in my eyes totally gorgeous.

I chose to use this colour bedside lamp in this bedroom to bring out the blue in the John Stefanidis fabric on the fabric but fear not this lamp is available in many different colours to suit any scheme.

Get in touch if you are interested in one of these beauties for your own home.

Honfleur by Bennison to me is such a delightful fabric, from the scale of the design, to the whimsical scenes portrayed, I felt it was the perfect fabric for the headboard in this room to see it fully stretched out like a canvas.

This bedroom had a high ceiling but all in all was not the largest and although I do love an impressive headboard I didn’t want it to overpower the room so instead I designed a low, delicate headboard and hung Butterfly prints from Etalage above to help work with the scale of the room. I also chose this fabulous wallpaper by Nina Campbell, inspired by Matisse, to help reflect the light around the room and add a subtle texture to the room.

Kit Kemp has always been a designer I have continuously looked at for Design inspiration and so when I got the opportunity to work at Firmdale Hotels with her incredible team I could not stop smiling…literally!

It was such an amazing journey from which I learnt so much. Kit helped me to be braver with designs and really push myself. I was able to come up with fresh and bold schemes for every room I tackled and the knowledge and friends I gained from this experience I will have for life.

I continue to have so much appreciation for this team of designers and cannot wait to see what they do next!

This little Entrance Porch now has a lot of attitude with this classic Palm wallpaper by Cole and Son that I used on all walls. It makes the room feel mysterious and inviting and my clients existing Singer and Mirror worked a treat with this look.

The tan coloured blind flows with the rest of the house as the core colour. I am known for accessorising and so I had the perfect opportunity with this plain blind fabric to use this fabulous and eye-catching braid from Samuel and Sons.

Sometimes these little rooms can be forgotten but I always think its nice to go for something a little unexpected, its fun and instantly creates a talking point!

This was such a fun scheme to work on! My client (like me) has a love and appreciation for colour and pattern and so I was able to push boundaries.

Mixing these sorts of bold contrasting colours and patterns can sometimes be daunting, but be brave! The different scales of the designs help for the scheme to work and adding the third colour, in this case the dark ink blue, helps to break up the bold colours so they are not over whelming.

This Orangery now helps to bring the colours of the flowers inside from the garden views beyond.

I recently picked up this gorgeous Peruvian rug from a show I attended in Coxwold for a client I am currently working with.

This is for an open plan living/kitchen area with hot pinks and bright oranges used on fabrics throughout the space so when I saw this rug I absolutely knew it was perfect! It now sits proudly in its new home and better still the client loves it! The pooch also approves and wanted to pose to show off how great he looks on it. Got to love a pooch photo!

My client needed some extra storage in the house but didnt want this to compromise the look of any of the rooms.

I designed these cupboards in a Guest Bedroom with a central free standing desk from OKA that also could act as a Dressing Table. To make the cupboards slightly more interesting I added the bookshelves down the sides and asked Ultimate Library to supply some genuine vintage hardback books to fill them but with the binders in a colour to bring out the reds in the other fabrics of the bedroom.

The dressing chair supplied by Julian Chichester was covered in a Nina Campbell fabric with the most gorgeous Nina Campbell embroidered braid, which softened that side of the room.

This created a lovely little reading nook in the room whilst also still providing essential storage, with some gorgeous joinery by Peter Thompson of York.

I recently travelled on a Legacy 500 to Cannes, which was another wonderful experience. The trip consisted of visiting Cannes for the famous Film Festival, sourcing local artwork for a project I am currently working on and some much needed holiday time with the family.

We stayed in beautiful Mougins where I found some original artworks by Jacques Bolore which were bold and bright paintings and perfect for the project! I cant wait until I can hang them in their new home.

I struggle for words when I am asked what Antartica is like? It is like no other place I have been and I want to be able to give this astonishing place the recognition it deserves. After too many words pour through my mind that still don’t give it justice I am always left with this one word… Magic!

I loved creating this Master Ensuite for a client which changed a fully floor to ceiling tiled bathroom into this sophisticated panelled relaxing environment.

The bathroom was quite a dark space despite having a decent size window and so I optimised the lighting levels by placing the sink and mirror opposite the window to bounce the light around and also placed mirrors in the upper panels beside the entrance door to help reflect the lights from the bookcase and make the room feel bigger. Mirrors are a great tool for this! With some low level lighting as well as high level the light was evenly balanced around the room.

I brought pattern into the room by using the smart herringbone tiled floor and continued the smart look using white Carrera marble in the shower area and sink top with polished chrome fixtures and fittings.

I always like to add fun elements into a room so I added the beautiful patterned fabric on the blind with a bobble trim, a bold stripe onto the chair to bring some colour in and arranged the bird prints in a way that decorated the walls the perfect amount.

All it needs now is a hot bubble bath with some candles and all would be complete!

I am loving the recent Instagram campaign by Roland Mouret #WomenInMouret featuring influential and professional women in our world! So inspiring

I wore one of the many many beautiful Mouret dresses and shoes at a film premiere recently and I truly felt fabulous! It was the right balance of femininity and strength. I just wish I could own all of their pieces!

I love the Crewel work by Clarence House I used on the chair cushion of this cosy Hallway Scheme. Crewel is a technique that has been used for at least a thousand years and is still going strong to this day.

The crewel has such a texture to it that it enhanced this warm scheme that my client chose.

When I am designing for a client I always produce at least 2 new schemes per room as I think its great to give choice and show how the same room can look so different with two different schemes.

Scheming is my favourite thing, at times I can pull a scheme together even if I don’t have a project for it as I love to keep playing around with materials and exploring new ideas, it also helps to keep you up to date with new materials that may of been launched.

I will keep adding schemes that I have pulled together on here!!

Travel is something I absolutely love to do and find that every place I visit, every culture I experience, I always find and learn something new that I can apply to my designs.

The image was taken when I crossed the border between Cambodia and Thailand by foot, needless to say it was possibly the most chaotic border cross I have ever done but an experience I look back on and smile.

I will be putting up a blog soon of the places I have visited so watch this space!

My Adventures

So whilst sitting in the little spot of paradise called Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados and looking out towards the beautiful blue ocean, ideas started spilling out onto paper for a master suite layout I am currently working on. I grabbed the nearest little notepad I could find and quickly jotted them down to work into them in more detail later.

I always find being away helps ideas to pop up as your brain tends to be more relaxed and you don’t have the every day distractions that can happen and so ideas have room to come out.

I can’t wait to see how this room turns out. For anyone who hasn’t been to Sandy Lane, check out this link as it is a must go to hotel!

My clients had quite a contemporary kitchen in a period house with the most wonderful bay window which for me only meant one thing The Bradley Collection French Pole!

This stunning design literally curves back and seems to disappear into the wall instead of having the traditional finials and I think in this setting it was the perfect choice. The poles are available in a range of wonderful colours and are templated bespoke to all your window needs so you don’t need to look anywhere else!

Not all window treatments need to be extravagantly trimmed three times however for this client, I used a soft grey colour on all the walls in the Entrance Hall and Landing with a neutral carpet which enabled me to then dress the window with a little more ZAP!

As the fabric is quite a structured design (designed by my fave Kit Kemp) I decided I wanted to finish it off with a bold 1.5” border at the bottom in bright pink to lift this colour out more into the Hallway. To tie in the wall colour to this blind I chose a grey leather trim tonally a few shades darker than the wall colour to make it pop but also flow nicely. I then softened the whole blind with this beautiful trim to reflect the natural linen element of the main blind fabric.

In the end this triple trimmed blind added the right balance of colour and pattern into this otherwise neutral Hallway.

I recently made a trip to Iceland in the hope of seeing the famous Northern Lights with no such luck, however the scenery I got to see and the places I visited here by far made the trip one of my most favourites I have done.

Iceland has so many beautiful places to see and on a 10 hour car journey we did to see the famous Jokulsarlon the landscape literally changed every 30 minutes, it was mind blowing and inspiring.

Design wise Iceland has a lot to offer, in the capital of Reykjavik there is a quirky sense of fashion and many boutique shops selling amazing interior accessories. I was in my element, I just needed a bigger suitcase.

I will be adding a blog soon on the places I visited there and exactly why I will be returning as soon as I can.

Sometimes we can be too quick to throw away or discard something but really with the right amount of thought something can be salvaged and loved all over again.

A client had these dining chairs and didn’t like the fabric they were in. I decided to use a contrasting fabric on the back as then when you move around the room you get two different fabrics to look at. Not only that I used a darker, more hard wearing fabric for the fronts to help them last longer. To finish off the chairs and make them even more unique I used a contrast orange piping cord to pull out the colour from the weave and really outline this simple chair.

These newly covered Dining Chairs now sit happily around the table and with the new scheme in the Kitchen.

I love designing Nurseries and Children’s Rooms as you can really push ideas that wouldn’t work in other parts of the house, you can almost have the chance to relive your own childhood!

This was a room I designed for a new born Nursery and I was given the brief that as much as they wanted it to be for a boy, they wanted to be able to change it for a girl in case the pitter patter of feet arrived again. I took quite a smart direction with this Nursery with contemporary half panelling around the entire room and then a neutral starry paper to all walls. I chose neutral walls which would enable the client to change the colour scheme if ever they wanted to.

I chose a crisp white embroidered fabric for the curtains which makes the room feel so fresh and doesn’t overwhelm the smaller size of the room. I then brought in this fun geometric blue fabric onto the blinds to bring the colour into the room and finished it off with a sweet squiggle braid.

I will be uploading more photos soon of this lovely little room.

Another project I was able to express my love of colour was for this Guest Bedroom. My client neither wanted the room to feel masculine or feminine and so I had to get the right balance of colour and pattern.

I decided to not shy away from bright pink but brought it in using this clever fabric on the curtains which has a geometric pattern therefore giving it more structure. I finished the window dressing with a neutral blind that had a floral outline pattern on it and brought out the yellow in the curtain fabric onto the trims.

I kept the walls neutral with a grey/green colour to balance the room and not make it overwhelming. Sat on crisp white bedding (my fave) I brought an embroidered stripe onto the bed cushions bringing all then colours into this part of the room.

I sourced the artworks above the bed which also helped to bring the pops of colour onto the walls.

In the end this scheme was one which could be enjoyed by all who stayed in it.

I was asked for this room to bring in the different colours of the leaves from the trees seen from the balcony beyond the bedroom and with green being my favourite colour I was more than happy with this starting colour.

I kept the scheme fresh with yellow to keep a light and airy feel but as the client loved quirky elements too I added a splash of pink into the scheme in small, subtle ways around the bedroom. I think it is nice to sometimes introduce a third colour into a scheme just to break up the dominant two colours, and as this was quite a large room it worked well.

I wanted to keep quite a natural feel to the bedroom and so used a linen look wallpaper on all the walls which gave me a blank canvas to hang artwork on.

This is a scheme I really loved and it delivered on the original client needs.

This was a bedroom and ensuite I designed for a young girl who loved the Bohemian look. I worked with the existing wall colour in the bedroom which meant I could really bring out the colours and patterns onto the soft furnishings which was so much fun! I brought a specialist paint effect onto the existing white french style furniture to change the look to more bohemian to save buying all new furniture as I knew I could make it work with a new lick of paint!

With neutral walls in the bedroom I decided to flip this idea in the ensuite with hot pink walls which looked so inviting from the bedroom.

This now colourful room is loved by my young client and I have since seen an easel up in the room which makes me feel happy that it is a room she feels she can be creative in.

I had the honour of being invited to the Yorkshire Choice Awards 2018 to celebrate the achievements of businesses and inspiring individuals from Yorkshire.

It truly was an enjoyable and thought provoking evening where I got to meet many interesting people and hear their journeys. The feature film I worked on called “Scott and Sid” sponsored the evening and so I was very proud to be there to represent the film and be a part of the evening.

Click on this link to the YCA website to see how you can get involved!

For this my client was telling me of a Safari trip she had been on with her family and I decided to use that piece of information to create a playroom, with a nod to the safari memories.

I used this fun wallpaper border by Cole and son around the top of the room which has scenes of animals which reminded me of a safari. I paired this with bright yellow and green materials to carry on that fresh nature feel and brought out the black elements from the wallpaper onto the trim and curtain pole to make the different materials work together.

This created a fun room for the little one to imagine adventures on safari and make the client smile in memory. This also got me thinking about my trips to Sabi Sabi sands and how much I wish to go back to see the beautiful animals. I will add a blog soon of my time on safari.

I had the opportunity to work on a feature film called Scott and Sid as Production Designer, and it really was such an interesting project to work on. As I am used to making rooms look nice sometimes doing this part of my job can be tricky as the set cannot always be nice!! Especially in Scott and Sid with one of the sets being a grotty toilet…eeeek!!

My role as Production Designer was to design new sets and also alter existing interiors/exteriors which in some cases could be more challenging as I was to ensure there would be no lasting damage. I was always the first on location to dress the set and make sure it was ready for when the rest of the crew turned up and so filming could start straight away.

Scott and Sid was an amazing film to be a part of, with the premise of the story being about Dreamchasing I really felt i could relate to the film on a personal level too. I am also super proud that Scott and Sid has been nominated for 3 awards in the National Film Awards 2019!!! Please make sure to vote for the film on the National Film Awards website and wish us luck!!

I am currently working on future film projects and will post more on my website soon…

Instead of hanging a ready made mirror or piece of art in this little alcove in an Entrance Hallway I decided it would be would impactful to design a bespoke mirror to fill the full alcove and really make a statement when entering the apartment.

I designed each square to make almost a mosaic effect with the mirror and also using Vintage glass added a subtle texture to an otherwise plain interior.

I get my bespoke mirrors made by Rough Old Glass who are always so efficient and helpful, they also have so many different mirror samples to choose from to meet individual needs.

Mirrors are a great addition to many spaces, they help make rooms feel larger and bounce the light around.