Revealing our master bedroom today! We decided to make this room our bedroom as it’s a fairly narrow room with a big bay window at one end. The shape lends itself to having a cosy bed area at one end and I have always wanted a dressing table in a bay window with lots of natural light (ever since I was a little girl, and I used to watch my mum getting ready for an evening out), so that’s exactly what we did. On a sunny morning, I love sitting in bed with my cup of Earl Grey, looking out of the window.
The walls in our room are painted in Lichen (No. 19) by Farrow & Ball which I love as it’s a deep, rich green, but still fresh. We also used it in our Guest Bathroom. Our cosy wooden bed is from Soho Home. As much as I love antiques (and I really do) all the antique beds I looked at were very creaky and wouldn’t have been easy to repair should they have needed it so our bed is one of very few new pieces of furniture we bought. Our bed sheets are from The White Company (I love their Arles bedding) and the little scalloped cushion covers are from Pigott’s Store in Sydney – one of my greatest finds.
The ottoman at the end of the bed is something I saw in a very stylish New York apartment belonging to a friend of mine and I knew I wanted one at the end of my bed. It was made for us by Sofa Workshop and the fabric is a Penny Morrison design called Ticking Stripe. On it I keep a tray (more scallops!) by Rita Konig for The Lacquer Company which I love so much I also got it in red for another room.
My dressing table was actually quite hard to find. When I did find the style I was looking for on Love Antiques I was actually away filming in America – I remember desperately trying to confirm the purchase with the worst wifi ever – but I got it! I also really wanted a green upholstered stool with a skirt and couldn’t believe it when I found the perfect one from Ceraudo. I honestly imagined it in my head and then – boom – it existed on their website! I’ve filled my dressing table with jewellery trays, family photos, my grandmother’s trinkets that she kept on her dressing table and a photo of my great-grandmother Marjorie Sharland, who was a very inspiring woman.
One thing I did discover during the planning and renovating of our house is how much chairs work as side tables, particularly when you’re saving space. I found a great little cane chair in an antique shop in Dorking, Surrey (a great village to visit for antiques, by the way), so I polished it up a bit, added a pile of books, a lamp and voila! I have my very own homemade side table. I think it’s such a fun way of making tables; they’re far more portable if you want to mix up your interiors and I change the books and lamp every so often for a different height which, when the lamp is on in the evening, creates a whole different look.
The fireplace was ripped out completely and we replaced it with one that was more true to era; a replica of what would have been in the house when it was built in 1819. The mirror above the fireplace is also from Love Antiques- I found all the big antique mirrors in the house from them. We absolutely love having a working fireplace in the bedroom, we actually use it! In the winter it’s so cosy and I’m really looking forward to our first Christmas morning here, Honor unwrapping her stocking and me popping some bubbly! What else is the master bedroom for?!
