Design notes: Rachel Chudley

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I'm Rachel Chudley.

I'm an interior designer, and this is one of the projects

that I'm particularly proud of.

I think this house is a great reflection of my style.

It was such a personal process to go through

with these clients.

And we've reflected their personalities

by using art, color, and a great kind of combination

of seemingly disparate elements pulled together

in a sort of eclecticism.

This kitchen, dining area,

is the most important room in the house.

And the biggest challenge here was to create

a large open space.

We needed to soften and warm things up in this room.

So part of that was to do with this table.

It's an old Irish farmhouse table made out

of this lovely warm wood.

This beautiful work of art by Joseph Goody

was found by the Cobb Gallery specifically for this room.

It's got these warm browns, reds, yellows.

And the swoop that goes through it.

I've tried to echo as much as I can in the textiles,

and the colors throughout the house.

There's a piece of land in Woodstock,

which is really personal to this family.

And so we came up with the idea

to create a map of that property,

that we could then pick out in brass inlay

within this concrete floor.

Another way that we've done that warming up

of this quite large room, is with the curtains,

which have been hand-dyed by Lucy Bathurst,

her company, Nest.

I think there's something about this vegetable dye,

and also the process of doing it by hand

that just softens the fabric

and just gives it an extra layer of texture.

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We chose for this room to be the cozy living room area.

And this wallpaper by Melissa White,

perfectly brings in both the feeling

of the natural feeling from the garden,

from the other side of the house.

But in this really deep, dark, cozy, autumnal sort of tones.

One of the wonderful things to pick out about the wallpaper,

which is something that Lucy Bathurst from Nest focused on,

was this almost berry-colored red.

And that then provided the inspiration

for these really gorgeous curtains

that have also been hand-dyed in in the velvet.

And then the other cozy, deep, dark color thing

in this room is the beautiful sofa.

And it was really important to the whole family.

They could all sit on here, all at the same time

and kind of get cozy.

It's also very comfortable.

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The main thing that I wanted

to draw people's attention to in this room,

is this incredible view of this beautiful garden,

and also the light coming in through the windows.

And in order to really go for that,

I used the moldings as a way to bring your eye

from the bed, up over the ceiling, and out of the windows.

Almost like perspective lines.

And this bedhead we actually designed specifically

to sit within those moldings.

So this fireplace is an original art deco piece.

It's got all these fabulous features with curves,

and also with the serious strong angles.

And then above it is a photograph

by Lucy Tatoe, of the Woodstock countryside,

which is so beautiful and also really calming for a bedroom.

This chair looked radically different

before we had it upholstered in a very bright mustard hide.

And I think that splash of color in this room,

it makes quite a big impact,

because it's quite a calm, soft colored room.

And then you've just got this little bit

of bright yellowy-orange. And it's perfect.

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This is actually one of my favorite rooms

in the whole house.

And I think that's partly down to this beautiful color

made for this room by Donald Kaufman.

It's a green, but it's almost yellow.

It's so warm and beautiful.

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I think it's really essential to take up this entire wall,

with the bath.

We cut out this little space,

and then used a Rocco wood,

which we stained this beautiful dark color.

These mirrors were originally from the 50s.

And we took out the very heavy antique mirror inside,

and replaced with something quite light.

And the reason we did this, is so that they could be used

as doors to hide a secret cupboard behind.

I really want my clients to feel delighted.

I think that's my major M.O.

It's a chance for people to have fun,

to think outside of the box.

And when they walk into the final product

of all this hard work, that's been their hard work,

with our hard work.

It's fantastic for them.

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