Goodbye tasteful neutrals, hello riotous prints: a Georgian renovation that delights in colour

Georgian interiors thin to beryllium decorated with quiet, tasteful dignity – each subdued hues and well-polished wood. But Nicola Gill, the proprietor of the Old Stout House successful Rye, East Sussex, wasn’t fired up by this approach: “I didn’t privation to bash different Georgian renovation with a palette of sludgy neutrals, portraits leaning against walls and pared-back styling. The Georgians were exuberant, colourful and hedonistic, utilizing vibrant colours and pattern. I wanted an uplifting clash of styles, eras, patterns, textures and colour.”

Built successful the precocious 18th century, the gathering has a varied past – arsenic an ale house, a grocer’s and a haberdasher’s earlier becoming a location successful the 1960s. When Gill, a writer and interior designer, and her instrumentalist spouse Pete recovered the spot successful precocious 2021, it was wholly unmodernised, with nary cardinal heating and past electrics and plumbing.

Nicola uses vivid colours, adjacent successful tiny rooms.

On the little crushed floor, there’s a eating country and a room that opens connected to the garden. The precocious crushed level has a surviving room, a chamber and a bathroom. There are different 2 bedrooms, which stock a bathroom, connected the level supra and a chamber and bath successful the attic. Unlike galore of its neighbours, the location had escaped listed status, but it turned retired to person a database of problems, from bedewed and adust rot to terrible woodworm. “We had wanted to support the archetypal horsehair plaster but that was damaged beyond repair,” says Gill.

The mates stripped the location backmost to its archetypal oak beams and conifer weatherboards, and rebuilt from there, keeping what they could to prevention money. About a 3rd of the weatherboarding was salvageable. New boards were added and the full batch was painted with heavy-duty barn overgarment truthful it each matched. Her builder urged her to regenerate the timber floors, but Gill knew that, with a airy sanding and a bully wax, they could beryllium restored.

The rudimentary room was turned into a eating country and brightened by coating the archetypal whitewashed ceramic walls, which saved wealth connected plastering. Gill enlarged the abstraction by adding a tiny hold and merging it with an aged storeroom. There’s a caller entranceway too, connected by a transition on the broadside of the house. The archetypal opened consecutive disconnected the thoroughfare into the surviving room. “That didn’t truly work, truthful we boarded it up. The yellowish beforehand doorway with stained solid is inactive determination underneath, if we ever privation to reinstate it.”

With the operation successful place, Gill could fto rip with the colour and pattern. “The decorators would ringing maine saying, ‘Are you sure? It looks horrible!’ but I stuck to my guns. It takes courageousness to support going with thing similar this.”

The exuberance of the finished look belies the cautious readying that has gone into it. Gill created a spreadsheet listing the paints, wallpapers, tiles and textiles for each room, to get the equilibrium right. “I wanted it to consciousness coherent. At 1 point, I was dreaming astir tiles each night.”

Lavender walls and saffron tiles signifier a striking opposition to the archetypal achromatic beams.

She advises starting with a favourite portion and gathering a country astir it. “You mightiness autumn for a rug, a wallpaper oregon immoderate furniture linen, truthful prime colours from that palette. It tin beryllium hard to harvester conscionable a mates of colours; it’s easier if determination are 3 oregon four. Then person amusive mixing things up, possibly stripes with florals, oregon carnal prints with geometrics.”

A existent wood room was beyond her budget, truthful Gill opted for a B&Q mentation successful airy sage greenish – the cleanable foil for bubblegum-coral walls. The terrazzo level tiles are from Tiles Direct and a room land is made from aged murphy pallets (she spotted this arsenic a show portion successful a section acquisition store and bought it for £100). There are besides tons of finds from Rye’s vintage shops, including an concern metallic cabinet, the artifact woody rabbit and cockerel needlepoint successful the yellowish bedroom, the bluish china jug and vessel successful the bay-window chamber and the ladder successful the greenish bathroom. Family pieces see a achromatic chinoiserie furniture picked up successful Hong Kong by Gill’s grandmother, and a Georgian rocking equine fixed by Gill’s parents to her children, present teenagers.

A premix of styles, patterns and colours, including wallpaper by Clarke and Clarke.

Gill avoids a “granny’s parlour” look by including a mates of modern pieces successful each room, specified arsenic creation deco-style lights and mirrors from B&Q and Dunelm, H&M cushion covers mixed with high-end House of Hackney ones and a secondhand pinkish velvet Parker Knoll sofa. The riotous pinkish wallpaper successful the surviving country is by illustrator April Mawhinney.

Gill’s extremity for combining signifier and colour without it feeling overwhelming is to use Coco Chanel’s expected benignant advice: “Survey the finished look past instrumentality the astir noticeable happening away.” And, she adds, “a spot of leopard people ever looks good”.