one room interior design toolkit case study
A family in Hampshire contacted me online looking for help transforming their front reception room from a little-used home office into a glamorous ‘but not too sparkly’ dining room.
At the heart of their planned redesign was a recently-inherited 250-year-old Georgian dining table.
The room, in a 17th Century townhouse, already boasted an abundance of period features including panelling, fireplace, and low ceiling with timber beams, providing a lovely backdrop for the mahogany table, yet calling for some modern updates to avoid the overall look feeling too formal/dated.
I proposed a statement floor-to-ceiling wall mural to introduce contemporary pops of colour & create a focal point in the room- in an elegant painterly-style design.
The clients were cautiously excited about this suggestion, so I built their bespoke Transformation Toolkit around this mural, recommending a bold off-black paint on two of the remaining three walls to reflect the backdrop of the mural & the blackened timber beams above.
This also added to the ‘evening glamour’ feel which was a key requirement of the brief.
A contrasting soft white paint was suggested for the remaining wall & across the ceiling introducing a modern, monochrome update to the space while also helping to bounce light around the room.
The traditional chandelier, velvet dining chairs, a bar cart and a bespoke sideboard were all recommendations within the toolkit and finally I suggested a rustic sisal rug to ‘ground’ the more polished notes in the room and bring a relaxed informality which was also on the client’s wish-list.
We had our first dinner party on Saturday and everyone adores the room. The number of compliments we’ve had from people popping in over the past two months has been wonderful. Even my painter complimented me on the paint, the colour and the mural which he never ever does!
We are thrilled with the room, there’s no way on earth we would have been creative, or brave enough, to have made a room like this so thank you!
- Camilla B. Wickham