HIGH DRAMA
Monochrome schemes and treasures from around the world suit the grand proportions of a detached Hampshire house
last word ‘I’m one of those people who always lugs back pieces from their travels, including an entire dinner service from Vietnam!’
Walking into the rather impressive chequered marble hallway of this Hampshire house, Sophie Bland was immediately struck by its sense of space and grandeur. ‘It ticked so many boxes, not least the fact that it would enable each of our four children to have their own bedroom for the first time,’ she recalls.
The only problem was that Sophie’s husband, Toby, and their children – Jemima, now 17, Lucy, 15, Jordy, 13 and Fergus, 10 – weren’t quite so taken with the space. ‘They loved the converted barn we were living in nearby, which we had originally bought when we were based in Hong Kong,’ Sophie explains. ‘They were reluctant to give up the large living area.’
In order to bring her family round to the idea, Sophie, who trained as an interior designer and ran her own business in Hong Kong, took the unusual step of treating all her family members as her clients. ‘I interviewed each of them at length,’ she laughs. ‘I asked them detailed questions about what they loved about the old house and what they wanted from the new one. I came to the conclusion that we needed to open up the ground floor to recreate the feeling of flow we had in our former home.’
Originally, the key spaces were all accessed individually from the hallway, so Sophie decided to knock through from the kitchen to the dining room and from the dining room to the sitting room, giving the sense of an enfilade.
For the first time, Sophie decided it was time to embrace colour – notably black. ‘I had always wanted to decorate with a monochromatic palette,’ she explains. ‘This house has so much natural light that I felt it could carry the look really well.’
The result has proved transformative, with black walls turning the dining room into a dramatic – and intimate – entertaining space and adding an edgy feel to the existing country-style kitchen.
Fortunately, the family’s possessions lend themselves beautifully to the new schemes. ‘We had so much furniture that we really didn’t need to buy anything,’ says Sophie, who has deftly mixed the old with the new, and the quirky with the classic. Many of the antiques are oriental, nodding to the Blands’ 20 years spent living in Hong Kong.
Sophie has not only given these antiques a new chapter but also this home, imbuing it with a bold new look that is both refreshing and chic. ‘We all love it now,’ she says. ‘It is amazing what a bit of dark paint can do.’