SUFFOLK HOUSE
Designer Michelle Kelly has mixed mid-century style with ice-cream shades to create a soothing take on seaside living
Lush William Morris wallpapers work a treat alongside ice-cream shades in this Michelle Kelly designed semi
my taste is for ice-cream colours, William Morris and Liberty florals – a mix that’s refreshing and unexpected but also cosy,’ says Michelle Kelly of the Suffolk seaside home she has created for media couple Rob Newland and Jo Lavender. ‘They didn’t want the usual coastal house with blue-and-white stripes. They liked the way I wanted to mix up greens and pinks and unusual colours. I think there’s a place for something different by the sea now.’
Rob and Jo first saw Michelle’s design work when they stayed at the plaudit-winning The Rose hotel in Deal on the Kent coast. She had restyled it with an eye for bold and surprisingly complementary colours, plush upholstery, vintage finds and wild patterns. Her design eye has been forged from 20 years as a fashion stylist, working with photographers including Ellen von Unwerth and Miles Aldridge, and creating looks for Rihanna and Taylor Swift. She is constantly in demand for her flair for mixing high-end, new-season glamour with offbeat archive pieces. ‘I take a lot of my colour inspiration from my favourite designers – I particularly love all the work Celia Birtwell did with Ossie Clark. I’m also inspired by Californian, David Hockney-style colours.’
Michelle took her design cues for the Suffolk house from the family, but also from the location. ‘ When you have a sea view, you want to make the most of it so the master bedroom upstairs, facing the beach, is furnished fairly sparsely,’ she says. It is decorated in a soft lambent pink – Sulking Room Pink from
Farrow & Ball, which is one of her favourite colours. ‘There was a question over whether it was going to be too much,’ she says. ‘But actually it’s really serene and draws your attention out to the horizon. ’
The gelato-like colours of the house include some green elements that read as pistachio, while the wood flooring brings a chocolate base note to the ground floor. Like a lot of Michelle’s favourite aspects of the house, all the wood on the ground floor was a vintage find. ‘We had planned to put new parquet down,’ she says, ‘but I found an old theatre floor while I was looking at architectural salvage and it felt right.’
Originally a cosy two-bedroom house, Michelle reconfigured a few key elements to get a third bedroom in the basement for Rob and Jo’s daughters, alongside a super-comfortable media room. A new wet room was also squeezed into the ground floor.
Rob and Jo told Michelle from the start they didn’t want anything ‘white washed and shabby chic’, like so many homes nearby, but that they had also intended to rent the house out for periods while they weren’t using it. Michelle’s design had to be durable and family friendly. ‘I put a lot of thought into what people would do here,’ she explains. ‘It is a place for big dinners and entertaining, drinking wine, relaxing and looking out to sea.’
This part of the coast still very much has an authentic feel. ‘It’s a really sweet area to spend time and switch off. It’s somewhere to play a game, cook and chat and go for long walks. That’s why I used things like William Morris and vintage china – it’s nice to embrace elements from the past, but in a modern way.’
Check out Michelle’s work at michellekellystyle.com