Interior DesigN: dining room, mayfield east sussex
The Project
This beautiful farmhouse in East Sussex boasts a wealth of period features such as traditional fireplaces and chimney breasts, arched doorways and sash windows. Surrounded by garden on three sides, almost every room is naturally linked to foliage and flowers, and really feels like the archetypal English country property.
THE BRIEF
When purchasing the property, our clients inherited a dedicated dining room - which they loved for its functionality, but less enjoyed for the dated red decor. Our brief was to reimagine the scheme, and pay special attention to the large windows - dressing them in a way that would suit the property, but also make a more harmonious connection between indoors and out.
Storage was also a key factor. With a healthy library of books in the family (including some absolutely stunning leather-bound tomes), the dining room was to do double-duty as a library, offering teenagers a quiet space to come and study, and also offering a potential work-from-home area in suitably quiet surroundings.
Our clients were keen to find that perfect balance between bold-but-easy-to-live-with colour. A scheme that would project confidence and be memorable for dinner guests, but provide a calm backdrop for afternoons spent in the company of books.
WHAT WE DID
One of the biggest transformations we made in this space was the injection of subtle pattern and texture across all walls. Thibaut’s Lattice Weave wallcovering has a classic interlocking basketweave pattern made from woven natural paperweave. The variation in the basketweave allowed us to bring colour to all walls, but without it feeling too solid or overwhelming. A small-scale pattern also works really well in a space where the walls are broken up by features such as large windows, a chimney breast, pillars, archways and internal doors. Where these features would interrupt the flow of a larger-scale more traditional patterned wallpaper, a textured wallcovering just wraps around the different shapes and still allows it to make sense to the eye.
Adding a pelmet to the window gave this dining room a fantastic sense of occasion, and also feels fitting for the style and age of the property. Our choice of Linwood’s Kitty fabric bridges the modern and traditional - and even comes from a Linwood collection called “The English Garden” - what could be better for this project?! This large-scale tree-of-life design has a beautiful flow to it, contrasting the more geometric basketweave on the walls. We absolutely love a curtain fabric which features multiple colours, and this gave us all the same colours we could see from the dining room window: greens, blues, browns and creams in the garden. A further embellishment and texture came from a sweet Colefax & Fowler fan edge trim.
Our choice of colour for the bespoke bookcases was Dulux’s Grass Green, which picks out the bolder green sections in the curtains and pelmet, and creates a real “wow” factor. Running the cabinetry up and over the door maximises storage space, allowing the cabinetry to run the full length of the wall without a break, and also creating an almost “secret door” feel to the connecting sitting room.
We added additional small-scale patterns into the scheme by reupholstering the antique dining chairs in Linwood’s funky Bolero geometric, and added a timeless Ian Mankin Ticking Stripe bespoke tablecloth. A ruffled edge adds softness and whimsy.