‘Don’t spend your money on therapy–just get an interior designer!’ jokes Laura Stephens’ client. It’s said in jest, but it is still testament to the life changing differences her new space has brought about. ‘I met the client just after her husband had very suddenly passed away,’ Laura explains. ‘She lived in a large semi-detached house and didn’t want to be there anymore. Her children had grown up and moved away. She was desperately trying to find a place to move into.’
At first, the client was reluctant to use an interior designer, worried that it was ‘over the top and a bit frivolous.’ She was already in the process of buying the flat – on the ground floor of a Victorian house – when her daughter reached out to Laura. After seeing her work online, she messaged her and said ‘I just want my mum to have this beautiful jewel box flat that she’ll feel at home in.’
That message became the brief, with the way the flat felt ultimately becoming more important than the way it looked. ‘She was downsizing from a house that she had shared with her partner for forty years,’ says Laura. ‘It was a massive process emotionally.’ As the client put it, ‘I wanted to really look forward and make sure that I had the right pieces and it felt like my home. I didn’t want to just recreate a smaller version of what I had with my husband.’
To strike the right balance, Laura wove the story of the old house into the new one, retaining some key pieces that had real emotional value. ‘I went to the original family home and it was stuffed full of antiques. We went through everything and decided what should come to the new place and what should stay.’ It was a process that meant Laura and her client got to know one another ‘quite intimately.’ Certain items, like the framed embroidery behind the sofa, became very significant in the scheme. ‘The client had picked up the tapestry with her husband on their travels in India,’ explains Laura. ‘We ended up using the colours in it to create a colour scheme for the living room.’
Working with the client’s pre-existing pieces was wonderfully freeing for Laura too. ‘I just love working with people at this stage in their lives,’ she says. ‘Their furniture is often a jumping off point that helps you to understand who they are and what they like. They bring all these meaningful pieces with them that clients don’t have when they are that much younger.’ Though Laura and the client were keen to repurpose as much of her furniture as possible, they also wanted to ensure that the interiors didn’t make her ‘feel like an old lady.’ To that end, dark wood furniture was balanced with more contemporary pieces, and soft furnishings were reupholstered in more exciting fabrics, like purple leopard print and graphic stripes.
