style scout
She loves her home, but our design magpie is not immune to architectural daydreaming once the big decorating jobs are done
I have lived in my house for seven years now, decorating it room by room, corner by corner. It has been a labour of love. From light-touch projects and paint jobs to a much bigger kitchen renovation and loft conversion, I never tire of change (although it may be tiring). However, now that the big work is largely completed, I have a new obsession: searching for another house to live out my architectural ambitions.
It’s a purely aspirational search at the moment, but still, my saved searches on Rightmove speak to my passions. There are one-bed flats in the brutalist setting of London’s Barbican, remote farmhouses in Wales, bothies in Scotland, manor houses in Wiltshire and mid-century bungalows wherever I can find them. It’s an eclectic collection, bordering on ridiculous, but my husband’s saved properties look surprisingly similar. Bedtime chat these days is reserved for a show-and-tell of the dream homes we almost certainly won’t be moving into (at least not any time soon).
My housing-market picks may look a bit like the inside of my brain (chaotic at best), but on reflection they often fall into two distinct styles. The first is romantic – think the villas found in Louisiana and upstate New York, all beautiful wraparound porches, big Georgian-style rooms and lots of wood cladding. This type of home has been the backdrop to many of my favourite films and TV series over the years, from Forrest Gump to Your Honour. My devotion to it is now the only reason I rewatch The Notebook (Noah and that house – swoon!). I have lost hours on the website of GP Schafer, an American architecture and design firm, while fantasising about a villa to call my very own.
On the other side of the design spectrum, I find myself equally drawn to something modernist. A home that feels minimal, with clean lines and a tasteful edit of sculptural furniture. I love nothing more than flicking through coffee table books on LA architecture from the 1980s and 90s to the present – Gennaro Postiglione’s The Architect’s Home is firmly on my Christmas list this year. Whether I’m cooing over the amazing light-filled kitchen in Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica house orinternetstarEmmaChamberlain’s living r
