Falls Village - The bedroom

The Bedroom

All of the bedrooms in the house were on the second floor, accessed via very steep stairs. I was wary of how feasible this would be later on in life, so chose to situate our bedroom on the ground floor. This meant adding an extension onto the house. I spent a lot of time and care making sure this was sympathetic to the existing architecture, as well as maximising the available footprint.

The room measures 20ft x 20ft, with an 18ft ceiling.

I was keen to source as many original features as I could to retrofit and make this new addition feel as though it had always been there; the mantle was found through an antique dealer on Instagram.

Having a seating area within the bedroom was a key requirement for me, inspired by the work of interior designer Nancy Lancaster.

When you have a tall room, you should do as much as you can to draw the eye up; hanging paintings up high, opting for tall furniture, placing plants on pedestals to give them extra height and adding interest to the ceiling. In a large room, it's particularly important to pay attention to proportion and scale; cornices and trims should be wider and larger to fit with the proportions of the room. The walls have been decorated with Venetian plaster, and polished to give a slight sheen. This reacts with the daylight beautifully and makes the room shine.

Lighting needs to be carefully considered in a large room. I inserted four ceiling spotlights in each corner to make sure it never felt too dark up there, utilised picture lights to illuminate artwork on the wall and included lots of table lamps - all on dimmers for maximum flexibility.

I was inspired by the faux stone floors in traditional Swedish houses and enlisted the help of decorative painter Robert Christian to replicate the effect.

The textiles and accessories have been collected from my travels over the years, and all inject a brilliant amount of colour and pattern. I included a variety of different fabrics and patterns on the bed, but sticking to a singular colour palette of blue helps the collection to feel cohesive and considered.

Further Reading

Nancy Lancaster

Haseley Court, designed by Nancy Lancaster

Sourcebook

Venetian plaster

Decorative painter Robert Christian