Page 107 - Homes amp Gardens UK February 2021

INSPIRATION
DRESSING ROOM
A painterly design
has been used for the
walls and curtains.
Curtains and walls in
Snow Tree in Cream,
Colefax and Fowler
been tailored to accommodate every different size of
book in the owners’ collection.
For Daniel, the joy of this project was that his personal
tastes and those of the client converged. ‘She loves florals
and a palette of pinks, blues and greens – and so do I,’ he
comments, adding that although the palette shifts from
room to room, there is a connection between the spaces.
‘I always consider the view from one room into the
next; it is important that it mustn’t jar.’ So, for example,
the plaster pink of the hallway walls and the greens of
framed botanical illustrations are carried through to
the adjoining sitting room, where Daniel’s approach to
couture decorating is witnessed in features such as chic
green piping on the pink sofa, or a slim band of orange
trim on the chartreuse-hued curtains. ‘Curtain making
and upholstery are not cheap but the fabrics don’t have
to be expensive. It’s all about the details,’ he posits.
In other rooms, curtains from the previous house
were reworked to suit the more modest proportions
106 H O M E S A N D G A R D E N S . C O M
MASTER BEDROOM
An 18th-century
French provincial
chair was
reupholstered to
suit the scheme.
Chair in Arlo in
Blueberry, George
Spencer Designs
of the spaces. The master bedroom curtains,
which match the drapes of the four-poster bed,
formerly featured swags and tails, so Daniel had
them simplified and hung them from a pole to
make them more relevant to the scale of the room.
Where required, furniture was carefully repaired,
such as a pretty iron bed that was missing a castor.
‘We had to pay a visit to an iron bed company in the
middle of a field – we discovered that antique iron
beds are quite a niche market,’ Daniel recounts.
Daniel summarises this project as ‘a miniature
country house in London’, and he believes that it
exemplifies – albeit in a small-scale way – what he
and his colleagues at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler
do best: ‘It’s about mastering colour and pattern
and focusing on every detail,’ he explains, adding,
‘Our company was born out of these principles.’ &
■ Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, sibylcolefax.com