A tour of Rita Konig's English farmhouse

[relaxed jazz music]

[Rita] This was a house that belonged to my husband

and it's what's remaining of what was a large estate

belonging to his family.

I suppose the things that make unique

to my interiors are the combination of pattern

and that thing of trying it, for it not to be too matching.

[upbeat jazz music]

I think the things that make a room comfortable,

funnily enough, the last thing that makes a room comfortable

or a room that people enjoy being in, aren't the colors

and the fabrics and all of those things

that actually we place quite a lot of importance on.

I think the layout is really the key,

and I think you could have a room that's really quite ugly

where that if the layout, it works, the room works.

[relaxed jazz music]

This is much more the room you sit in

before dinner and chat and this sofa,

which my husband thinks is uncomfortable

I actually find incredibly comfortable

because it sort of holds you sitting up.

Whereas a very deep sofa when you're sitting in a dress

with a drink is very uncomfortable

because you've got to sit up in it and you get no support.

And then the other thing once you are sitting is

where do you put your drink?

You need to have tables close by

and how are you gonna read your book?

So you need to have proper light.

So those are the, those I would say

are the three key things,

and then the rest sort of falls into place.

This was the first color I did, this room

and that was really copied from Jane Ormsby-Gore's house

in Wales where she has this green on the walls

of her sitting room, which is so pretty.

But the main thing I wanted in here was it

to feel evolved rather than too coordinated and planned.

[slow jazz music]

The next door was quite a fun room to decorate.

[upbeat jazz music]

The wallpaper is this paper I love from a company

in LA called Twigs, from Simon Playle.

[upbeat jazz music]

This sofa came from my mum

and I re-covered it in the corduroy, which I love,

and I love that it is sort of a soft and comfortable fabric,

and I love that color too.

I think with corduroy I really like using colors

that would be jackets.

Good corduroy jacket color rather

than prep school boy trousers.

I bought the cushion at a Battersea fair

and then when I got it here I was like,

Oh my God, it's huge, and thought, Oh well I'm gonna have

to cut... I'll cut it there and there

so it's the same at the other end.

And the other really nice thing about this cushion is

it's really soft so you really, huh?

You really sink into it, which is also important.

So these, I think that came from Christopher Howe.

I bought lots of baskets.

I kept on buying because I like a big basket

of logs in a room.

I think it feels, it feels warm.

[upbeat jazz music]

We didn't really have room to have a dining room,

and so quite quickly it was obvious

that the kitchen would be the dining room

and was quite an easy leap to convince myself

that it therefore should be a plain English kitchen

because it needed to look really nice at night.

So I had these arched windows here

and in fact I looked to Amanda Brooks's house.

She had all these arched windows

which must have been garage doors at one point or stable,

and she just had put rods up

and curtains which worked so well.

So I sort of followed her lead here with that.

I think, funnily enough in the country,

you really want curtains.

There's that thing of drawing curtains

and blocking out the weather and the night.

So these curtains are unlined.

So I chose a fabric, this is from Lee Jofa,

which is just like a blanket, and when you do that,

you want more fabric because you don't want them

to feel skinny.

So in order to get the feeling of enough

you need to probably double your quantity.

The dresser I had in my first flat,

and it came from William Yoeward on the King's Road.

When I came here, it was a perfect fit there.

In fact, I had started looking for things to go there,

forgetting that I had that.

[upbeat jazz music]

You want the things you have, to have some feeling.

You want your children to have grown up around them

before you move into your forever house

and suddenly everything's new and they're in an alien place.

Or the flat you lived in, in your twenties,

that table that might have been your pride possession there,

might be in a guest bedroom down the road

but it's come with you a long way and that's really nice.

[upbeat jazz music]

Have collected a lot of things.

Mostly I suppose, bed linen,

and suddenly I'm able to make up beds in guest bedrooms

that have really nice linens instead

of having to use, A going to spend quite a lot of money on,

you know, something quite ordinary.

[trumpet jazz music]

Putting fabric on the walls has this very nice quality

of sort sound deadening so you feel very cocooned

when you wake up in a room like this,

and I wanted to do that quite old-fashioned thing

of having everything in the fabric,

so the walls and the curtains.

[trumpet jazz music]

Then this bed is made with a blanket.

I prefer beds made with a blanket

because I don't think beds look very nice made with a duvet.

I love really white, pressed linen,

and then it just knocks it off a bit from being too prim.

With the smaller rooms, you want to make more of a fuss

because you want them to be comfortable

and this room is often, we have to use for a single adult

so I then made it as a single with these big pillows.

So I like the over the topness of the color in here

and the pink stripey lampshades and the pink heart sheets

and the Welsh blanket and the yellow quilt

I like the madness of the color in here.

[Child] Are we nearly finished?

[laughs] I think so, yeah.

[upbeat jazz music]