Monumental Coach House
When a retired couple took on the ambitious plan to turn a monumental coach house into a house, I was lucky enough to be part of their journey.
Since the coach house had never been used as a home, but was once used for horses and carriages, literally everything had to be designed in order to create a place to live; with ceilings, rooms, windows, bathrooms, closets, a kitchen, a hall, etcetera, etcetera!
They approached a wonderful architect to take the monumental coach house challenge on.
When they arrived at the interior decorating part I got the chance to help them to create a wonderful new home, that would reflect their taste and ideas.
The biggest challenge was the spatial planning. As you can imagine a coach house has high ceilings and lots of space. We wanted to keep it spacious, but we also wanted to make it feel warm and inviting as a house should feel.
Since the coach house is a monument we had to apply certain colors on the wall, that were originally used in the coach house. For example the living room, which was by far the largest space in the house, had to be painted in a deep, warm yellow.
Also we had to recreate the original floor of the coach house, which consisted of brick red and dove grey tiles.
Those elements were the two most important things to take into account while I created the color palette for the house. I took the wonderful, warm, deep yellow and the brick red and dove grey into my color palette. I chose ‘Sudburry yellow’, ‘London Clay’, ‘Charleston Grey’ and ‘Picture Gallery Red’ from Farrow & Ball, as the base of my color palette. I added green and blue tones to balance it out. With that color palette we started to select fabrics for the curtains, the sofa’s, cushions and lampshades.
My clients and I went to ‘Loggere Wilpower’ in s’Graveland (near Hilversum) to select beautiful fabrics.
While choosing fabrics and colors for paint and wallpaper, I like to keep in mind the pieces of art that a person, or a couple owns. Most of the time people are very much attached to their paintings, portraits or photographs and these items play an important role in decorating a house or appartement.
In this case I made pictures of all the paintings and portraits that the couple wanted to bring into their new home. I printed the photo’s and with the prints of all the pieces of art I made a selection for each room in the new house. By doing so we tuned in on each room and it helped us to feel the atmosphere and the most important colors of each individual room by selecting the pieces of art room by room.
With the color palette that I created initially and with samples of the tiles for the living room and with the selection of art per room, we could select the fabrics for the curtains and for the sofas quite easily.
When choosing fabrics I keep in mind the color palette, the samples of a floor of a kitchen for example, but I also keep in mind the period a house dates from. Fabribs and prints should support a house and its atmosphere and they should not overrule it.
We selected wondeful fabrics at ‘Loggere Wilpower’ from Manuel Canovas, Jane Churchill and Colefax & Fowler.
The fabrics embodied the monumental, rustic style of the former Coach House and its green surroundings. One of my favorite fabrics was the ones that were used for the high windows of the spacious living room. Those curtains have a beautiful warm print with leaves and pheasants in warm autumn colours with a touch of purple to keep it fresh and modern.
The warm colors and beautiful print made these curtains an eyecatcher, yet since the colours matched so well with the tiles and the paint of the wall, it seemed as if they had been there forever!
The sofa’s we found at the ETC in Culemborg and we kept them calm in an understaded green tweed. They had to be inviting and comfortable so you would be happy to relax near the fireplace with the dog at your feet!
For a touch of fun and color we went to Madame Garage in Haarlem where we found several lovely lampshades in fresh and modern prints to complement the color scheme.
The project took a few years in total, but we had so much fun and the house fits like a glove to its happy owners!
If you are interested in working with Sophie, please contact her here.