This Friday’s  ‘Interior Design solution’ post is doubling as a ‘Before and After’.  Here is a suggestion for an upstairs landing – how to have an attractive wall visible to the people in the hall downstairs yet not too flamboyant and ‘in your face’.

 Here is a photo from a client’s hallway.  I only have the ‘after’ photo but all I did was add the wallpaper on the landing.  It is a dormer house and the stairs leads to 2 bedrooms.  As you can see, there are gorgeous tiles on the hall floor, a lovely stairs and the paint colour on the hall is a beautiful green.  My client wanted something for upstairs, yet we didn’t want to take away from the hall.  I wanted to create the effect that people would glimpse it as they walked past the stairs to the reception rooms and think ‘oooh, that is nice’ without it taking precedence over the hall. I chose this wallpaper from the Designers Guild Taraz range, the reason being it is a subtle statement in itself, it provides some impact when up on the landing. 

I mentioned some time ago that I am trying to get into the habit of taking photos of clients’ finished rooms if they don’t mind. I really admire the way Yukari is so organised  and showcases her fabulous lampshades and fabrics in her clients’ houses.  You can see some photos on her blog but here’s a couple I really fell in love with.

The colour for this Tulip Tulip fabric is bespoke – isn’t it gorgeous?  My bedroom at the moment is green as are a couple of other rooms (well, green tones) and I’m adamant to change the colour scheme soon  but I do yearn after these.

Tulip Tulip on mustard silk.

And this lampshade has red silk on the outside with Manor House damask print on the inside.

Yukari Sweeney Wallpaper and Lampshades can be purchased here.  Other designs as well as fabrics can be ordered from Garrendenny Lane.

Something I am really bad at doing is remembering to return to a client’s house to take photos when the curtains / blinds are hung or whatever else we have worked our magic on.  Part of the reason too is that I am not that great a photographer!  However, I returned to a client’s house the other day as I had some finishing touches to add to the room and I remembered to bring the camera.

This is a lovely cottage that has been extended and the owner was simply afraid of using colour, afraid of getting it wrong so the living room was somewhat bland, bare and minimalist but it really didn’t need that much doing to it to get it right.  The single window is small and had wooden venetian blinds already but the room really needed texture.  As the window is small, and the room isn’t that big, we used a single curtain pulled to the left with a nice tieback.

(There is still a picture awaiting hanging by the way – the last thing to still be done!).  The lamps are a very dark dusky pink and look purply in a dim light and pick out the colours of the fabric beautifully.  The lamps are textured too – thereby adding a very subtle texture to the room.  By the way, the fabric is Iris by Swaffer.  I initally brought her quite a flamboyant tieback but that was too much for her minimalist nature and I was pushing her boundaries a little too far. We settled on a gold tieback which brings out the gold in the fabric (hard to see in the photo on the curtains but you can make it out in the cushion).

There is a small porch off the living room which was used as storage even though the front door led into it so the owner was determined to create a porch she would be proud to invite visitors into.  We used Swaffer fabrics again – a cut striped velvet.  As the window was a little too wide for one width of fabric, we used plain bands of Veneto velvet (also by Swaffer) at either side – partly due to cost and partly to pick out of the colours and add definition to the blinds.

There are wooden venetian blinds in the 2 porch windows too and we added the romans to add warmth and texture to this area.  A textured vase and an artifial orchid finished it off nicely. Not pictured is a little wrought iron garden chair with a round cushion in the striped velvet (on the other side of the porch).

 Co-ordinating cushions were also made for the sofa and chairs and we finished off with some nice candlesticks and a clock on the mantelpiece (which I’m afraid I didn’t take photos of).

The owner paid me a fabulous compliment when I was there. Self-employed with 3 children, she is the type of person who finds it hard to sit still and said she rarely sat down in the evenings. However, since this room has been altered, she is now sitting down relaxing perfectly happily in the evenings – finding peace in her haven of a beautiful cottage at long last.