Do your surroundings influence your design?

How does our environment or our surroundings influence us when we design?

I remember working with a client years ago, who completely changed his mind two seasons after he gave me his initial brief.

When we first met it was Winter. His brief was to include strong colours. Starting in the lounge, he wanted to pick out the feature wall using a deep, rich colour so I suggested either Preference Red or Pelt, both from Farrow and Ball, balanced with a neutral like Joa’s White, which he loved.

I prepared a design including velvet covered sofas with plenty of sumptuous scatter cushions and interlined silk curtains. Unfortunately, before I could present the design scheme, he was called away with work for six months.

When he returned to the UK and I saw him again it was Summer and his brief had changed. The colour scheme he now wanted consisted of neutrals and pale pastels. It couldn’t have been more different to before, and interestingly he told me that he'd been working in Miami.

So, I did some research, looking at the famous Art Deco area and hotels in South Beach for inspiration and almost booking myself a holiday in the process! It was so much fun and I quickly put together a scheme, starting again with the lounge.

It was great to use such a broad palette of colours including; soft greys, pinks, sky blues, oranges, lilacs and mint greens. Romo’s Linara fabric, a washable linen union, was brilliant to use as upholstery so I covered one sofa in Feather Grey another in Mineral and a couple of occasional chairs in Egret.

More soft tone were introduced by using a couple of multi coloured throws, similar to the beautiful Herringbone Rainbow blanket and the Orange and Grey Windmill throw sold by

www.thebritishblanketcompany.com

I found the perfect fabric for the curtains called

Arche

, from Casadeco and added a plain voile to create some layers and kept the heading simple by using a double pinch pleat. Finally, I decided to use a simple pole in bright mirrored stainless steel finish to complete the look.