A choice of colours

The first thing they did when moving into their new Oslo apartment, was to paint it all white… ‘We were in such a great hurry with our move, as we were expecting our son Otto to be born any day, and so he arrived the day after we got our keys.’ says Synne Skjulstad. As soon as they had got used to their new arrival and their ever so ‘nice’ nest to bring him up in, they got out their paints and wanted to play…  They started off with a bucket of glossy signal-red oil paint and dressed the hallway with built in storage solutions and shelves. Then they moved on to a patch of bright yellow in their Amish dove grey kitchen. These two colour choices and the dominant painting in the sitting room led them to an acute stop in their process. The solution came when trying to ‘’keep up with the Jones’s’’. When at the home of their architect-neighbours Andreas Joyce Nygaard and Heidi Pettersvold they started thinking of their home as having the look of a boring council office! So they asked their neighbours for help with the rest of the colour chart... view feature

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How the country got stylish

The Pop Store design team’s eclectic take on the rural idyll in the heart of Oxfordshire The address given for Sam Clapp and Brian MacShane’s south Oxfordshire home leads to a stout panelled door in the façade of a white-painted cottage, in a row where gardens are carefully tended and voile curtains neatly pleated. We check the address; this is not what we had expected. The pair are the creative force behind brand development and design agency Pop Store, known as a rebel in the retail market. Their company designed the wacky headquarters for energy drink company Red Bull, and took the temporary, pop-up shop phenomenon out of London and on the road to Birmingham, Leicester and all points north. So a picturesque 250-year-old cottage is not what one would have imagined they would call home. The only hint that something might be a little different is the irregular flashing of coloured lights through a window. As the door opens, the lights become brighter, and a large, arrow-shaped neon funfair sign with the word “Thrills” comes into view. It sits on top of a sizeable haberdasher’s cabinet. “It was bought in Hoxton and intended for the main bedroom, but was too big to go up the stairs,” says Clapp... view feature

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Who said Oxford was blue?

Jessica Sainsbury runs hotels that are famed for being cool – and her Edwardian villa is a mix of colour, pattern and texture, too Jessica Sainsbury’s hall wallpaper is not best seen after a heavy night. Great gloops of acid green and fuchsia weave up the stairs of the Oxford house where she lives with her husband, a don at Worcester College, and their four children. The lurid colours would come as no surprise to guests of the grocery heiress’s hotels – the funky Gloucestershire spa Cowley Manor, the Michelin-starred L’Hotel in Paris, with its baroque jewel-box bar, and the latest addition to her Curious Hotels chain, the Canal House, which opened last year in Amsterdam. “We asked fabric designers Sharmil Govindia and Sally Hemphill, whom we used for Cowley, to make the wallpaper, because there wasn’t anything out there with bright enough colours,” laughs Sainsbury, the daughter of the former Conservative minister Sir Tim Sainsbury. “And then I thought, what the hell, let them do the curtains as well”... view feature

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The Baileys

Everything in their16th century hillside vicarage near Ross-on-Wye is reclaimed from something – an old factory, a church, a junk shop, an atelier, a fruit farm. Wooden boxes nailed to walls work as bookshelves. School lockers are remade into kitchen cabinets. Bottles become lampstands. And nothing is too polished. Floorboards reclaimed from old houses are roughly painted in off-white. Paint and wallpaper has been steamed off to expose gorgeous shades of sand- and peach-shaded plaster which they have left bare. Decorations consist of old shop signs, giant scissors that once advertised a barber’s, shelf after shelf of garden tools, shoe lasts with antique clothing hanging from it, mannequins with Sally’s collection of ethnic jewellery round their necks. Everything is warm, used, and oozing character... view feature

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Burst into Life

An elegant pale grey palette combines with traditional features to create a stylish backdrop, which is emboldened with colorful cabinetry, furnishings and artwork. The house itself was rather dilapidated but this was ideal for Andrew who wanted something he could redesign to suit his taste and style. Before long the small boxy rooms on the lower ground floor were given over to one big open-plan space and the property expanded with a loft conversion and rear extension... view feature

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Tangerine Tango

Then again maybe 2013 will be  A year with Tangerine Tango... we don’t do you?….big thanks to for Isabel de Yzaguirre for her help in putting this month’s newsletter together. Her blogs are well worth checking out Isabel de Yzaguirre.

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Split Clarity

Less is more or so says this trend, it’s Split Clarity: functional, minimal, simple, essential; these are their elements. Clean, high tech, sustainable, new materials, clear-cut modern in its vision. The clarity is introduced by way of the colour palette, which given its name, comes as no surprise takes its inspiration from nature. Versatility in materials in this trend is crucial, reflective and metallic surfaces, transparent and semi-plain patterns are used as are  animated yet restrained surfaces. Severity in graphics with high contrasts and linear designs will create the depth giving the illusion of light and shadow by using them with different materials and surfaces. http://texturefabrics.wordpress.com/

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