The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
Rate My Renovation ‘We copied Farrow & Ball to trim costs’
Trips to Morocco influenced couple’s style choices, reports Samantha Partington
Ever since Jess and Olie Collins got engaged while on holiday in Morocco in 2014, the country has held a special place in their hearts. Before becoming parents, the couple enjoyed frequent stays in Morocco’s hotels, where the patterned tiles and rich colours made a lasting impression on their taste for interiors.
Almost 10 years after their first visit, Jess, 42 and Olie, 49 have introduced those influences into the renovation of their Victorian four- bedroomed terrace home by the seaside in Hove, East Sussex.
Telegraph Money asked interior stylist, writer and design consultant Joanna Thornhill, to cast her eye over the couple’s makeover to get her take on their efforts.
Jess and Olie have transformed their plain white bathroom into a boutique hotel- style wet room with a wood panelled bathtub and his and hers basins against a colour palette of greens and gold.
The couple are experienced renovators, having tackled the refurbishment of their London home, which they sold in March 2021 to move to the coast. Jess, a marketing professional and mother to Anais, 5, and Beau, 2, confesses that even when she completes a room, she’s never truly finished.
“That’s why I chose green for the bathroom,” says Jess, who records each step of her renovation on her Instagram account, ren.hove.ation.
“For me the shade is a neutral colour, it looks great with so many other colours, you can quickly update the look by switching the accessories.”
Joanna says: “Jess’s loose inspiration here was modern Morocco and it’s fair to say she’s nailed it. There is sometimes a danger of going overboard and creating a space that looks themed and has no connection to the rest of the house, but the touches that Jess has added nod to this aesthetic while still feeling distinctly British.”
The double sink vanity unit was a long-admired feature of the Moroccan hotels Jess stayed in with her husband.
The sink cabinet, at £ 775, was bought from Tikamoon in a sale, down from £1,200. The gold trimmed mirrors are a Marks & Spencer find costing £130 each. “We used the gold finish throughout the bathroom, on fittings, handles and taps to tie everything together,” Jess says.
Joanna says the pops of warm earthy green works well against the wooden sink base giving it a welcoming, biophilic feel – a design concept that embraces nature.
Jess chose hand-made white zellige tiles for the walls from the Baked Tile Company. “I love the imperfections and different colours you get from them,” she says. On the floor and splashback, she chose green pradena porcelain tiles from Bert and May, costing about £63 a square metre.
“My approach is to spend as much as you can on features such as taps and tiles, that’s where you can get the most impact, and then go cheaper on things like the bath and the toilet,” she says.
The couple replaced the bath and positioned it centrally, while extending the window down. Inspired by designer Beata Heuman’s use of tongue and groove bath panelling, Jess asked her joiner to recreate the look on a budget with about £100 of wood.
‘Spend as much as you can on features such as taps and tiles, that’s where you can get the most impact’
Next door, two rooms have been turned into one spacious master bedroom. A relaxing reading space has been created in the bay window with the addition of a boucle armchair, with patterned cushions, café-style shutters and yellow floor-length curtains.
The curtains came from their previous home. To dress the smaller bedroom window in the same material, Jess bought the smallest set of matching curtains she could find from John Lewis, along with a roman blind kit and made the blinds herself.
To save money, Jess chooses Farrow & Ball paint shades and gets them colour matched at paint shop Johnstone’s: “It’s about 50pc cheaper.”
Joanna says: “Jess has cleverly nodded to the seaside location of her home with subtle yet successful touches in her bedroom, from the ‘swimmers’ artwork hung above her bed and striped accents on soft furnishings, to the touches of rustic textiles seen in her woven basket bag and on her panelled wardrobe doors.
“Pops of vibrant yellow, coral and blue also introduce less obvious beachy tones, with the neutral backdrop keeping things calm.
“She’s followed one of my top design tips, which is to ensure there’s a ‘red thread’ running throughout the design – meaning that the colours, motifs and materials within the space all have a relationship to each other, in a way that looks organic rather than contrived,” she says.
Adding a compact sofa into a bay window is a good use of an otherwise awkward footprint, says Joanna.
Jess got creative to enhance the appearance of her Ikea Pax wardrobes.
“Ideally, I’d like to have a beautiful old piece of furniture in the room, but ultimately we need practical storage so we went with the Pax system because there’s lots of different options for inside. But they’re white and bland,” she says. “I’d seen lots of wardrobes online with cane panels cut out. I loved them, but it would have been quite the task. Instead, I came up with the idea of covering the MDF square panels with linen which just slot in, giving the illusion that it’s all cut out and the fabric is behind.”
The wardrobes were painted in stone blue and Jess bought the handles in a sale from Anthropologie.
Joanna gives Jess’s Ikea hack the thumbs up. “I love what Jess has achieved by customising her previously bog-standard wardrobes.”
The bedroom chest, to the side of her reading bay, was a Facebook Marketplace find. “It’s perfect for our tiny alcove. I gave it an update by whitewashing it and adding handles from Plank,” Jess says.