10 Beautiful Rooms

It’s Monday so it must be time to look at 10 more beautiful rooms and highlight the work of talented designers, architects and photographers to inspire us all.

These first two room are by Suzy MacAdam, a Dublin-based designer who began her career in California before returning to Ireland and setting up her own studio. I love the dark walls above with the two palm trees either side of the window and the Seletti monkey lights. It’s fun, it’s bold and it brings wit to her design. Something that is often missing from interior design when the sums are money are large and can often induce a sense of humour failure. Try to find it and bring it back I say.

Last week I had two clients both of whom had mostly finished their houses and both of whom wanted help with the finishing touches. Both of them also had navy blue kitchens. Is the reign of the all white kitchen over? I like to think it might be. There’s nothing wrong with white but look how characterful and strong both these designs are.

This is one of my all-time favourite kitchens. Crittal windows, grey cupboards with a dark grey island, natural wood and black accents. If I could replace my bifold doors I would. I have settled for painting them black. Both of last week’s clients had crittal windows across the back of their kitchens. One from Crittal and one in crittal-style aluminim. Both looked amazing.

But the love for the critall doesn’t stop there. Designer Cherie Lee often uses them in her work as you can see in the two images below.

My house isn’t this shape and I can’t think where I could put an internal glass wall even if funds were permitting but that’s not to say I don’t still love looking at them and dreaming…

But then again, as I have said before, it’s all about the glimpses into other rooms for me. Of course you want the room you are in to be lovely but it’s just as important to enjoy the view into another room as you pass by. Perhaps to the fireplace in the sitting room as you race out of the door to work promising yourself that come the weekend you will sit in there and relax.

Or the view to the spareroom – perhaps mostly empty but at least make sure you are looking at something attractive when you rush past and not a pile of laundry and all the junk that you cleared out of the kitchen and dumped there to make space for something else.

This is the kind of view I would enjoy every single time I walked past if this were my house. It’s by French design studio Royal Roulotte whose work also features in the new Rockett St George book which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Black shelves really do make the books stand out.

And look at this fabulous black kitchen. I’m always encouraging people to consider patterned tiles for their kitchens – it’s more practical than a rug and softens all those hard lines. You don’t have to do the whole floor if you worry it might be a bit too much – just a lay a rug shape of tile and put the wooden-effect tiles, or floorboards, or plain tiles around it. You can lay it like a runner as they have done below or make a rug under the table instead of a real one.

And finally, because it’s the end of the feature so somehow a good bathroom always feels like a good place to close. And it’s back to the view idea. You probably don’t have time to have a bath every day but looking at this at you hurtle past to the shower on a Tuesday morning reminds you that you are one day closer to the weekend when there will, perhaps, be time for you to indulge yourself in relaxation and making space for yourself.

Have a good week everyone. I’ll be back here tomorrow. Do drop in.