Colette van den Thillart tempers glamour and drama with a soothing colour scheme in this Canadian house

The resulting structure has a grand gabled, black steel window - reminiscent of the villa's glazed verandah - that frames the back garden's greenery. Colette designed a bold limestone chimney-piece for the room, conceived to resemble the rectangular pattern framing the entryway at Nancy Lancaster's legendary Oxfordshire residence, Ditchley Park. And from her own vintage textile collection, Colette unearthed a chintz fabric she turned into cushions, complementing the Victorian-style patterned tiles on the floor (which is heated to stave off Toronto's winter cold). A plump, curvaceous B&B Italia ‘Tufty-Time’ modular sofa unifies the room, helping to harmonise the various influences within it.

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After the success of this space, Jane asked Colette to move on to the rest of the house, where the designer was led by her clients' sartorial preferences to devise a soothing colour scheme. Bruno has a penchant for earthly tones and Jane's style relies on aquatic hues, accented by touches of silver and gold. ‘I always consider what my clients wear and what is in their wardrobe,’ explains Colette. Of the rose-coloured shades and hints of peach in the drawing room she says with a smile that she sold them to Bruno as ‘Italian pink.’ In any case the striking palette allowed her pull off some impressive visual tricks. In the dining room for instance, the cobalt-lacquered ceiling intensifies the theatrically of the hand-painted wallpaper from Gracie, evoking Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa woodblock print. ‘The ceiling was originally white, which was wrong,’ says Colette. ‘This colour was a way to liven and lend atmosphere to the room.’

Art from the owners’ extensive collection hangs on the walls: above the white sofa – with velvet and Kuba cloth cushions by CVDT – is a large work on paper by Jason McLean. The Pierre Paulin-inspired swivelling chairs are covered in a Kelly Wearstler velvet.

Alex Lukey

Similarly, her use of various mirrors round the house has altered the scale and mood of its rooms. In the drawing room, two floor-to-ceiling mirrors flank another extraordinary chimneypiece. This one is made from plaster, its flame design recalling the inferno-motif hearth that Robert Winthrop Chanler crafted for the Manhattan art studio of his fellow American artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the early Twenties. The mirrors frame the structure and maximise the natural light.

Upstairs, the bathroom mirror serves a practical purpose but, combined with chrome fixtures, it also makes the silver-leaf walls adorned with hand-painted poppies totally showstopping. (The flowers are a nod to ‘Anemones in Light’, the wallpaper produced by de Gournay in collaboration with Kate Moss.) Colette admits that reflective surfaces are something of a signature of her work, citing the illusions conjured by Sir John Soane using convex mirrors in his London house as her influence. ‘Mirrors magnify space,’ she explains. ‘I like how they disappear and almost become voids, as opposed to taking up space. The mirrors by the fireplace allow the flame sculpture to sing.’

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Also lending dynamism to the drawing room are the swivelling chairs stationed by the chimneypiece, which reference Pierre Paulin’s ‘Ribbon’ design from the late Sixties. Their flexibility – in contrast to the formality of the Knoll armchairs Colette has placed in the garden room – encourages conversation. The patterned sofa cushions fashioned from Central African Kuba cloth and a diagrammatically woven Kate Thornley-Hall rug lend more energy to the drawing room, which, Jane admits, was barely used until it was enlivened by Colette’s touch.

Alex Lukey

Texture, curvaceous forms and accents of cognac and bronze conjure calm and warmth in the main bedroom. The looped wool broadloom carpet somehow feels like a cosy sweater underfoot. Jane says that custom pieces designed by Colette – including a silk velvet headboard and a Murano chandelier – make bedtime completely irresistible. As Rocco bounds in, leaps onto the Kuba cloth bedspread and reclines on the bed, it is clear that he agrees.

Nicky Haslam describes his protégée as able to ‘make the outrageous look simple’ and ‘put things together in a way that would never be apparent to anybody else’. And it is this, combined with Jane’s scholarly knowledge of art, that has made this space both intoxicatingly glamorous and ultra comfortable.

Colette van den Thillart: colettevandenthillart.com