MISSING LINK
Having resolved a disjointed layout, Alison Nicholls’ next task was to introduce colour and a sense of fun to her home
Alison Nicholls is the first to admit that she and her husband, James, made some mistakes when they embarked on building a new home in the Suffolk countryside 15 years ago. ‘There was originally a Sixties bungalow on the four-acre plot, which we decided to demolish, but we were faced with tight planning rules,’ Alison explains. ‘The design was a compromise as it needed to look like a farmhouse attached to barn-type dwellings. We also had to excavate at the back of the house to gain a full second storey while keeping the roof height the same.’
What the couple and their architect devised was a large, horseshoe-shaped layout that wrapped around a courtyard. ‘When we finally moved in, in 2006, we quickly realised that we were only really using one wing of the house, where the kitchen was situated,’ recalls Alison, who has three grown-up daughters from a former marriage, as well as a 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, with James. ‘ We had a large playroom and study but because it was at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen, the girls never went there,’ she adds.
Over the years, Alison furnished the house with dark wood antiques, as well as a number of intriguing pieces such as carved panelling salvaged from a hospital chapel. ‘I filled the home with these things yet I wasn’t sure how to show them off,’ she says. ‘The tipping point came a couple of years ago when I looked around and realised my home was pretty much all brown.’ The couple agreed that it was time to get professional advice. The moment Alison met Lindsey Rendall of Rendall & Wright, the pair hit it off. ‘Rather than start to look at colour charts and swatches, she quizzed me on the practicalities of how the house needed to work,’ says Alison. ‘It was so refreshing.’
Alison and James had been mulling the idea of adding an extension that would join up the two ends of the horseshoe, so that the house would form a square around an inner courtyard. Lindsey encouraged them to undertake these works, turning the new, light-filled extension into a dining room and adding a large window to the formerly dark kitchen. ‘The effect was transformative,’ says Alison. ‘Suddenly you could walk around the whole of the ground floor – it flowed so much better.’
The couple are keen sailors and it was the sleek lines of yachts that influenced the new kitchen design, with its nauticalinspired palette of white, blue and rich walnut wood. The deep blue hue was then carried through to the walls in the dining room, where inviting velvet chairs were covered in a tonal leopard print. ‘I thought that fabric was a step too far,’ says Alison, ‘ but Lindsey gave me the courage to bite the bullet.’
Taking key pieces of furniture and art that already belonged to the couple as her cue, such as a pair of mustard yellow velvet sofas in the sitting room that had formerly been surrounded by a sea of brown antiques, Lindsey sourced a striped coffee table for an added punch of colour. The effect is a lighter, brighter home. ‘Lindsey gave us the confidence to strip away the things that didn’t work and make a feature of the pieces that did,’ says Alison. ‘And it is wonderful that all the rooms now get used.’