INSPIRING
The unremarkable exterior of a painter’s suburban home belies the otherworldly scheme she has created inside, not only as a beautiful backdrop for family life but also as a showcase for her unique work and style
PRODUCTION DAISY BENDALL
DINING AREA
This smart but relaxed space features two striking panels created by the owner. Faraway Land wall panel art prints in Euphoria, Diane Hill. Dining table and chairs, Made
FAMILY ROOM
A wall of bifold doors leads to the back garden. Walls in Quarter Mushroom, Zoffany. Curtain fabric, Harlequin, made to measure by Jane Clayton. Patterdale sofa, DFS. Floor lamp, Homebase. Tables, JD Williams. Rug, Ruggable
Diane Hill doesn’t just work from home, she lives surrounded by the fruits – as well as the flowers, trees and birds – of her labour. In fact, these rich and exotic images of the natural world feature in every room of the house, even the cloakroom. It was in 2006, while she was studying textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University, that she was leafing through a book on Chinese wallpapers and discovered chinoiserie – an artform popular in 18th-century British interiors.
‘I saw a design that didn’t repeat but was panoramic and beautifully handpainted,’ she recalls. ‘I knew at that moment it was what I wanted to do.’ She subsequently trained in China and has since been creating dream-like botanical scenes in gouache, with her family home now doubling as a gallery-like space for her murals, prints and textiles.
When she and her husband Matt bought the semi-detached house they share with daughters Rosie and Bonnie, it was more grim suburbia than fanciful sanctuary. As she explains: ‘It hadn’t been touched since being built.’ The 1959 property was very old-fashioned both in terms of decoration – an avocado suite starred in the bathroom – and layout. ‘It was typical of that era,’ remembers Diane. ‘There was a small kitchen at the back and a shut-off dining room.’ One of the first things on the to-do list was to open up the downstairs to give it a more spacious, contemporary feel.
As their daughters grew up, however, the couple felt the need for more square feet, which inspired the redecoration and extension of the property in 2022; plus, Diane was determined to replace the ugly floorboards with engineered wooden flooring. Their reimagined home, which was completed after eight months, became the perfect showcase for Diane’s collaboration with Harlequin, part of the Sanderson group, on a new wallpaper and fabric collection.
Two important elements of the update were the creation of a loft studio (‘I’d been working at the dining table before’) and a new family room – a contemporary kitchen-diner-living space where a rug,
