In September, the interior designer Beata Heuman sat down with House & Garden‘s Emily Senior to discuss a recent project. A modern house built in the 2010s and designed by its former owner, the space presented Beata’s team with a specific challenge. ‘Generally,’ she said, ‘when designing, I’m thinking about what was happening around the time that a house was built, then adding a little from that decade and every subsequent one, to make the space feel evolved. Here, we couldn’t really follow that method. It didn’t feel right to go much further back than mid-century.’
However, even though Beata herself deviated from the method in this particular project, it got the House & Garden team thinking: is this the very best way to make a house feel lived in? We’ve all heard about designers, like Sophie Ashby, who ‘start with the art’ in a project, or legends like Robert Kime who started by finding a beautiful rug, but does this approach make more sense to achieve a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere even in the freshest of new builds? With that in mind, we combed through our archive looking for excellent examples.
Perhaps one of our favourite illustrations of this is in Douglas Mackie’s Georgian flat in Marylebone. His study is incredibly appealing and much of this is the result of its feeling of evolution. On the warm ruddy walls, an early-twentieth-century Berber panel and a Thirties portrait by Spanish-Cuban artist José Segura Ezquerro hang. The coffee table is a Forties French table; the side chair mid twentieth century and the lampshades are made of antique saris. The resulting mish-mash of eras is surprisingly cohesive.
The technique has been applied in some distinctly modern spaces, too. In a new build, owned by Rixo cofounder Orlagh McCloskey, the space feels softened and lived in thanks to the presence of antiques and references from across the decades. In the open plan kitchen and sitting room, contemporary elements – like a smart kitchen island – are balanced by a vintage bar cart, rug and bamboo cabinet. Much of the decorative pieces on the bar are vintage too.
Mark Fox
Mark Fox
In the below Queen Anne house by Carlos Garcia, the interior designer has sensitively restored the 18th-century space using details from across the centuries. As you walk through the house, different periods and eras jump out at you, each having their chance to sing. As he puts it, ‘It is a very romantic house with beautiful proportions, but it’s something of a mélange. The core is Tudor with Queen Anne additions, and both the staircase and the carved front door came from other houses. Nothing had been done to it for years and there were only two bathrooms. So the challenge was to update it, including rewiring and introducing three more bathrooms, but make it look as if it had not been modernised.’
Paul Massey
Paul Massey
Over in Duncan Campbell and Luke Edward Hall’s Gloucestershire cottage, a collection of furniture and home accessories are given a chance to shine in a jostling, joyful mix. Staffordshire dogs sit against bright and contemporary colour combinations and pretty moirés cover slipper chairs. It was in a 2021 column, in fact, that Duncan wrote, ‘To recreate a historically accurate period interior is a wonderful thing, but for me the great joy in decorating is in the mix. The mix of styles and periods, of old and new, high and low, of bespoke and off the shelf. Objects in a room talk to each other, and when the mix is right, a space can feel like a perfect dinner party, with an interesting selection of guests, some naughty, others charming, but everyone getting on in a kind of symphony where no-one dominates the conversation, steals the last roast potato or puts a cigarette out in your favourite piece of lettuce ware. With that in mind, some thoughts on getting the mix right between old and new.’
