LONDON HOUSE
Christmas with Designers Guild supremo Tricia Guild is all about vibrant hues put together with many an unexpected twist
The home of Designers Guild founder Tricia Guild is a dazzling yet harmonious place that fuels her imagination and provides a striking setting for the holidays
“The living room has wonderfully elegant proportions, benefiting from lots of natural light via lofty bay windows”
my favourite colour at Christmas is cobalt,’ enthuses Tricia Guild, founder and creative director of Designers Guild, the globally renowned homeware brand, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. ‘It’s surprising and to me, full of love,’ she says. Nowhere is this more vividly played out than in her London home, where she has quite literally splashed all the shades of blue and green found in nature, from soothing sea and summer sky to the depths of an evergreen forest, across walls, curtains and furniture. It also proves to be the perfect palette for complementing Christmas, when Tricia teams streamlined modernity with the feeling of the handmade. ‘At Christmas, I’m a traditionalist in some of my heartfelt feelings, but not in the manifestation of how I want to live,’ she says of decorative details like the contemporary customised wreaths, wound with fabric strips, ribbons, twigs and foraged foliage, which the designer hangs all through the house. The twinkling of Christmas trees, strung with pretty garlands, are placed on the balcony, rather than inside, to be viewed through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling French doors. Candlelight shimmers in bathrooms and guest bedrooms, and the house is filled with the strains of carols from King’s ‘as well as a little bit of Wagner and Rod Stewart thrown in, too,’ says Tricia, laughing. The Yuletide table is, of course, Tricia’s favourite domain. ‘I always like to have something new for the table,’ she says of this year’s patchwork mix of plain and marbleised-printed linens in a spectrum of azure, sapphire, chartreuse and jade. Tricia complements these with vintage green glassware and iridescent tumblers, and adds in a kick of the unexpected with flowers – particularly big, blowsy and pom-pom headed dahlias – in a shot of shocking pink. ‘The thing about using colour is that I want it to be harmonious and balanced, but to also have strength about it.’ You can see this in the solid blocks of colour she has applied to feature walls in the vast open-plan, almost loft-like, living, dining and entertaining spaces, masterminded with help from architect Stephen Marshall. ‘I like how it feels almost like an apartment – I don’t feel that I’m in a traditional house,’ she says. Bought three years ago, the house is situated on a corner plot which ‘allows every room to be filled with wonderful light from three angles,’ she says. Even though its Victorian bones had been recently restored – converted back from five apartments into a gracefully proportioned family home – ‘the house lacked personality,’ she says. Some rooms were neither sensibly sized nor in the right positions, so Tricia and Stephen opened up the ground and lower-ground floors to create a flow of light-filled spaces, supported by steel columns painted white. ‘We purposely didn’t hide them – it gives the house an edge. The feeling is creative and informal,’ she says of combining white plaster, bleached oak floorboards, polished concrete f loors and galvanised metal skirting with f loating white boxes and shelves hung on the walls, some curved like ribbons, to bring the mood of an art gallery to each of the living, dining and entertaining spaces. Against this, the house hums with patina of mid-century pieces by Kai Kristiansen and Finn Juhl and the streamlined simplicity of pieces by MDF Italia, jostling alongside collections of ceramics, glass and art ‘I’ve had for years and years,’ says Tricia. Ultimately, the designer’s home provides the perfect playground for fuelling her imagination and a place to experiment with new colours and patterns. ‘I don’t feel the need to separate my home and working lives, as I’m always looking for new inspirations and ideas to sustain and invigorate what I do,’ she says. ‘Here, I’m happy for all the parts of my life and loves to collide.’