25 Beautiful Homes July 2020

A few issues ago I picked yellow as my decorative colour of the year. It was popping up across our houses like buttercups in a meadow, as bursts of sunshine seen on cushions, chairs and even sofas. But a lot has changed since I wrote that and the collective mood seems to have moved on – suddenly we’re all drawn to the coolness and calmness of blue. Perhaps it is the way the shade evokes holiday skies or warm oceans, or both, but schemes that feature it seem inviting and relaxing at the same time. The family home on page 126 (which also features on our cover) is pretty pared-back except for occasional pieces of dark blue furniture, and the result is sophisticated and rich. There’s more blue in Amy Spargo’s…

Like many city dwellers, Georgie Jones and her husband Laurence had long wanted to move to the country. ‘We were living in London and had a small house, an expanding family and a dog,’ says Georgie. ‘We both agreed we needed more space.’ Then fate took a hand. ‘We were down in Hampshire having lunch with our friend, the interior designer Annabelle Holland and her husband Anthony,’ says Georgie, who is co-founder of childcare agency Like Minders (likeminders.co.uk). ‘We were discussing our plans to move to the countryside and, quite by chance, they happened to know of a house for sale locally and suggested we go and view it.’ First impressions of the property were favourable. ‘It was a very pretty house built of brick and flint,’ says Georgie. ‘There was also…

The view plays the starring role here,’ says Laure Dzierzynski de l’Etoile of her home overlooking the Arcachon bay. ‘I remodelled the interior so that the sea can be seen from anywhere in the house. Throughout the day, colours change with the tides; it’s a spectacle we never tire of.’ Laure, an interior designer based in Bordeaux, has been coming to this part of the world since she was a child, and a number of years ago, she and her partner bought a house on the Presqu’île du Cap Ferret. ‘The only thing that was missing was a sea view, so three years ago, I began to search for another home,’ says Laure. What they found was a 1930s house, one of the oldest buildings in the village of Le Canon.…

FAVOURITE FEATURE ‘I love the roof lantern in the living area – we’ll often lie on the couch and watch the clouds drift by’ Our home couldn’t look any more different to the original house we bought,’ says florist Jemma Cox. She and her husband Phil moved to the terraced Northamptonshire property 18 years ago when she was pregnant with their first child. ‘It was the only place we viewed and even though it was dark with woodchip wallpaper and a peach bathroom, we both knew we could turn it into our forever home,’ says Jemma. Creating the right scheme for their family, including children Madison, 17, and Darcie, 13, had its challenges. ‘We must have decorated 10 times since moving in and our home has seen everything from Ikea to Cath…

Five years ago, Tapio Teppo’s brother called him with a proposal. He’d found a plot of land in the town of Hanko, 100 kilometres west of Helsinki, and wondered if Tapio would like to buy it with him and build a property for their families to share. ‘It was a really exciting idea,’ says Tapio’s wife, Pauliina. ‘We’d rented summer houses in Hanko for years. The plot was amazing, too – it had a private path leading down to a beautiful beach.’ The drawback was that the couple and their children – Sonja, now 10, Oskar, eight and Tio, four – were in the final stages of building their own new home. ‘But we couldn’t let this opportunity pass,’ says Pauliina. ‘So we agreed to buy the land then wait a year…

DESIGN ADVICE ‘Always expect any home renovation project to take longer than you think – and cost more than you’ve budgeted for!’ Less than two years ago, photographer Tiffany Irving (@tiffanytruly_ ) and her husband Ed, a business development manager, took the brave step of selling their beautifully renovated Victorian semi and moving into rented accommodation so that they could transform a dated 1920s property to create their forever family home. ‘We’d moved into the Victorian house a month before we realised I was pregnant with our fourth child,’ says Tiffany. ‘We managed to turn the place around within about 12 months, including a wraparound extension, and here we were about to start from scratch all over again.’ This time, though, the couple wanted to capture the essence of relaxed Californian-style interiors…