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Five Beautiful Rooms for a Bank Holiday

In a little departure from tradition this week we are going to look at five beautiful rooms, since experience tells me that many of you will be too busy enjoying the long weekend to look at blogs and add to that the stunning weather – in the UK at least – means that even fewer of you will be dropping in before tomorrow when we’re all back at work.

image by @around_houses
image by @around_houses

Also after last week’s slightly manic week involving a talk at Soho House for the book, a brief appearance on BBC Radio 4 You & Yours, the book launch party and working here round the edges, I have been also talking advantage of the long weekend to do quite a lot of sleeping and paint the kitchen. Well some of it. The Mad Husband has done the bulk of it. I have been mostly self-cast in the role of moral support. I’m extremely good at that part I might add and you can all see soon.

So a little selection of some of my favourite rooms starting with the sitting room of Fiona Cameron, of Around Houses, whose sitting room features my current favourite colour combination – chocolate brown with splashes of pink. Her walls are painted in Farrow & Ball London Clay which, and I can’t stress this enough, looks nothing like this on my computer so always buy a tester. The rug is from French Connection, who have a pretty fine collection.

mad about the house sitting room with Enid Cat
mad about the house sitting room with Enid Cat

More of that colour with my own sitting room, shown here before the chaise was re-upholstered in blush pink, which is painted in Fallen Plum by Cassandra Ellis, whose colours are gorgeous and deep. Here it is again with the new chaise, which was upholstered by Vintique Upholstery as you may remember.

mad about the house sitting room in fallen plum by cassandra ellis studio
mad about the house sitting room in fallen plum by cassandra ellis studio

And here, because this is her former flat and she’s a wonderful interior designer, who makes furniture as well as paint is the London flat of Cassandra Eliis, whose pink daybed inspired me to turn my chaise pale pink.

cassandraellisinteriordesign
cassandraellisinteriordesign

And here is the kitchen in that same apartment with its vintage black china cabinet, old table and cast iron radiators.

by cassandra ellis via the modern house

Next, because I clearly cannot count, is this rather wonderful bathroom showing off a new Little Greene wallpaper which I wanted to include for the deep purple/brown paint around the window and show how well it goes with the orange bath which could just as well be pale pink as we are sitting in that spectrum this week.

little greene wallpaper woodblock mono knightsbridge
little greene wallpaper mono

And finally, less chocolate or plum but still with the pale pink is another of my favourite houses by the interior designer Beth Dadswell, whose soft pink walls and zellige tiles appear regularly in the pinterest board that makes up my dream life.

designed by Beth Dadswell of Imperfect Interiors and photographed by Chris Snook
designed by Beth Dadswell of Imperfect Interiors and photographed by Chris Snook

And there you have it. Not 10 as usual nor five as promised but seven, although two are mine so perhaps that doesn’t count. Enjoy the sun, don’t burn and I’ll be back tomorrow.

 

 

 

Kate Watson-Smyth

The author Kate Watson-Smyth

I’m a journalist who writes about interiors mainly for The Financial Times but I have also written regularly for The Independent and The Daily Mail. My house has been in Living Etc, HeartHome and featured in The Wall Street Journal & Corriere della Sera. I also run an interior styling consultancy Mad About Your House. Welcome to my Mad House.

5 Comments

  1. As a student I lodged in the Victorian house of an architect’s family, and that first photo could be their hall, including the piano! That house made a huge impression on my subsequent preferences, and many times later sneers at ‘seventies brown’ have made me wince. What comes around goes around.

  2. Love love love all of them. That bathroom is to die for, such a relief not to see the black, white brass combination, even though that’s what mine are! But the chaise? Much prefer it how it was, the revamped one doesnt work imo. The pink yes, the floral no.

  3. Painting the side of a free standing bath is a cracking idea! What type of paint would you suggest I use..?

  4. Hi, do you think you could possibly tell me where to source the table n chairs in Beth Dadswell lovely kitchen that you have featured today?….. or a suitable alternative that you just may have come actoss!
    Happy Bank Holiday Monday!

  5. Love that blush colour, but oh dear; Enid is missing from that second photo of your chaise.

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