The Ultimate Guide to Interior Design

Stone and tiles are a big-ticket item in your designs. Rita takes you to Lapicida, a stone specialist and explains how she often gets maximum impact with budgets by using ceramic tiles, as well as when it’s best to go ahead and use the real thing.

In this next phase of the process, Rita walks you through drawing a colour palette together, advises how to get options up on your walls without creating confusion, and helps you consider the flow of colours throughout your house.

From years of experience, Rita explains how to get the best out of your decorators, from keeping a paint schedule to spotting a roller or brush finish.

By breaking down various types of fabric Rita teaches you how to use texture in your designs. She also reveals a few of her go-to fabrics.

Rita shows us the results of accepting the 'Schumacher challenge'!

Discover how to put a colour scheme together in this demonstration, with Rita designing a room in real-time.

Rita’s country house in Country Durham, North Farm, has been featured in Elle, The Times and The Independent. In this lesson, Rita explains exactly how she arrived at the scheme for the sitting room. The workbook for this lesson contains a list of paints, fabrics and materials used in each room of the project.

Rita visits Daylesford, one of her preferred homeware shops and teaches how to pull the best pieces from their collection.

Your kitchen is a room and should feel warm and soulful. Rita breaks down the lessons she’s learnt: layout, storage, mixing surfaces and heights, the perfect banquette and why islands aren’t always such a good idea. She also goes through her kitchen at North Farm.

In this lesson, Rita goes through her London kitchen and reveals the best places to save money when designing a kitchen.

Bathrooms can easily become sanitised and utilitarian spaces. In this lesson, Rita explains why she often uses wood, standalone furniture and vintage pieces to soften the bathroom, and then gives a tip on which materials work best for tongue-and-groove.

Rita takes you through one of the bathrooms at North Farm, decision-by-decision.

By keeping her lighting simple Rita emphasises mood rather than design. In this lesson she reveals why lamps and lampshades are still the most pleasing source of light, as well as why pendant lights require real attention.

Suzanis, dhurries, flat weaves, berbers: Rita demystifies the world of rugs in this lesson and takes you through her go-to finishes for flooring.

The sitting room is all about comfort, and in this lesson Rita teaches you how to bring comfort and luxury to your designs by following a few simple rules: have different levels of seating and light, layer the room’s furniture and always ensure there’s a table close to each seat.

Rita runs through how she works with wallpaper and other specialist finishes while reminding you that the walls, though important, are the backdrop to the main event.

Rita takes you to one of her favourite boutique shops - Cutter Brooks - and explains that even if you can’t afford anything it’s always worth visiting to get inspiration.

Rita explains the technicalities of getting your upholstery right: percentage fill of cushions, ratio of feather to down, upholstering vs recovering, and how to buy a really good quality second-hand sofa that can then be recovered.

Hanging pictures is all about scale and finding the right wall. Rita runs you through the various different techniques she uses for laying out her pictures, and explains how the best layout will mean your favourite picture isn’t always in the most obvious place.

Curtains and blinds add real finish to a room, and Rita breaks down how she chooses fabrics and linings that finishes the room and hang well together.

For Rita, china and glass is an exciting way to add layers to a design. In this lesson she advises the best way to build a collection, as well as why buying good second-hand china is a wise addition to your collection.

Beds should be the core of a home: Rita encourages you to prioritise making your bed beautiful and comfortable, and reminds you that ‘when someone comes to stay they’re not going to remember the colour of the walls, they’re going to remember how comfortable they were.’

Rita takes you through one of the guest bedrooms at North Farm, step by step.

Rita breaks down what makes a great laundry room.

Rita reveals the opportunities presented by hallways, passages, landings and corridors, as well as her favourite methods of shelving.

Rita wraps up by explaining that waiting for your house to be finished misses the point that decorating and design is an ongoing process.