Inside Flora Soames' peaceful woodland cottage | Design Notes

[birds chirping]

[jaunty music]

I moved here to Dorset a year and a half ago.

I had spent quite a lot of time here.

And I had very fond memories of riding here,

staying with friends.

And it's so unusual being positioned

in the middle of the woods.

The cottage is called The Old Pheasantry.

And the house has been lived in by various families

over the last 10 years.

And it had a very warm feel to it.

And I needed to do very little structurally.

I was also aware, given I do what I do,

I wanted to bring in A, my own stuff,

but also put my own stamp on it in terms of color.

And I wanted to be able too, from an early point,

to make it feel like my home.

This room is just open, flowing, very informal space.

I mean, I spend a lot of time in this room.

Enid has a happy home in her basket.

Resplendent on her namesake Enid's Garland fabric.

I bought this picture only about a year ago.

It's a very specific space, I knew I wanted a landscape.

And I love the Ivon Hitchensesque quality of it.

Sadly, it's not a Hitchens.

I think actually it's surprisingly

representative of the view that I look out on daily.

And I love those rather muddy colors.

Also, one of the most important things in my collection,

really, is that starburst clock,

which belonged to my grandmother.

And I love that it's found this happy home

sitting on a pair of Fortuny damask panels,

which fit these alcoves literally to the millimeter.

This pair of crewelworks,

I just love the colors and the simplicity of them really

on this beautiful, very fine Hessian cloth.

I love this braid.

It's a mixture of cotton and leather.

I purchased that sofa back from a sale

of some of my grandmother's items at Sotheby's.

Must have been about five years ago.

That wonderful Bennison print that you can't go wrong with,

which is very stained,

both with her muddy paws and now mine.

And I love it.

It's just perfect for this space.

This ottoman is one of my fabrics.

So this is a Chartwell weave.

I think the geometric design is everything

and it doesn't need a sort of

fussy piece of furniture to go with it.

I also love leaning things against walls.

I mean, as you can see, photographs,

cards that mean something.

It's amassing memories really.

I'm not very good at throwing things away.

And I love being able to glance up there

and see something that makes me feel happy.

[soft music]

I think this is one of the most extravagant

decorating decisions made in a rented house,

to wallpaper this room in the Dahlias wallpaper,

which was the first wallpaper of my collection.

I love wallpapering in small spaces.

And I think it's really important not to be afraid

of having that very enclosed, quite chaotic feel.

And that's what this paper is about.

It's about it being busy,

it's about it being a sort of an assault of color.

And really, I've played on that.

This exquisite bourette de soie

in a very vibrant saffron color is a length of fabric

that I've had for a long time.

And it's so fragile

that really I couldn't do anything else with it.

I couldn't upholster anything with it.

It would be sun damaged in a second.

So it makes this beautiful lampshade

that I know I will enjoy forever,

and offsets the paper perfectly.

So this is one of Soames weaves.

This room started with the curtains

and ended up with the wallpapers.

And I think they sit incredibly well alongside each other.

I'm just waiting to hang these Fornasetti plates,

which I think is the icing on the cake.

I'm not sure everyone's gonna approve of that decision,

but I rather love it.

So this room is always gonna be my guest bedroom, really.

And I love the fact that people can come and stay here,

and it's comfortable, and it's peaceful.

And I think it's got quite a calm feel to it.

I love this dirty pink.

I think it's Edward Bulmer Lilac Pink.

I also think books are an incredibly

important part of any room.

One thing that I knew that I wanted to hang

in this room was this set of asparagus plates.

So I came across these through a dealer

in St. John's Wood, be about 15 years ago.

And thought, Flora, you really have no need

for that many asparagus plates in your life.

And that was the basis for the scheme in here, really.

This is my bedroom.

And the reason why I chose this bedroom

was all about the view.

I have wasted a lot of time lying in bed,

staring out at those hills.

And I'll never have a view like it again, I don't think.

My main objective in this room,

as with the rest of the cottage,

was for it to be incredibly cozy, and feel very familiar.

I've always loved this Pierre Frey wallpaper.

And it seemed the ideal room to use it in.

I love the idea of giving

a sort of soft backdrop to the bed.

And I just think it's not too much of a feature,

but it does exactly what I want it to

with this landscape sitting above it.

A touch of Enid's Garland.

And not much room for me on the bed, needless to say.

This room has ended up as my workroom.

It took a long time to sort of figure out

how it was going to work as a room.

It's quite a awkward long space

with these extraordinary large windows.

But it's the perfect workroom if you're rather

undisciplined, like I am, in organizing anything

in a remotely neat fashion.

So I can pile everything up, I know where it is.

But also I've got it to hand as reference or inspiration.

Whether it's the existing collection,

whether it's pieces that I'm currently working on.

This was one of the first lots of samples that I bought,

and I just think that palette is exquisite.

I think you've got,

there's something very jewel-like about them.

Purple's always been one of my favorite colors.

I know I'm not really allowed to admit to that

because the connotations aren't always

necessarily that tasteful.

But I guess that's probably what I rather love about it.

The garden has a fantastic,

very simple structure in terms of the perimeter hedges.

Really, the colors of the picking garden do shape

and inspire the collection that is expanding.

I love that there's nothing too polite about them.

And I would love that to continue to influence

the new colors that I'm constantly

bringing into weaves, and prints,

and wallpapers that we're launching going forward.

[soft music]