Inside Jeremy Langmead's singularly enchanting Suffolk house | Design Notes

[dog huffing]

[smooth jazz music]

My name's Jeremy Langmead

and we're in our country home in Suffolk

near a village called Ash Blocking.

I live here with my husband Simon.

We've been together seven years

and I think this is the first house

where we sort of, you know, feel we've really unified

and created something we both love together.

So when we moved here, it's very interesting how

a house is bossy and dictates what works

and the whole place here felt quite soft

and gentle and country-ish.

And so we had to actually change a lot of the furniture

because the pieces were just too big and imposing for here

so it was a wonderful excuse to

sell things and buy more ones instead

When we were moving here, I really knew

that I wanted to do wallpapers, which I hadn't done before.

And so a friend of mine, Susan Deliss

who also has most exquisite taste

and has an eye that I didn't really see in anyone else.

And so I asked her to help us with this house

and it was a really enjoyable, fruitful collaboration.

I really wanted home to not remind me of work.

I love my work and I love working hard

but I also want to escape

and I think what's so lovely about here is I can retreat.

[smooth jazz music]

[Simon] Since I'd sold my business,

I am able to work from home.

So it's lovely, I can spend some time in the garden,

be doing little jobs around the house

and I just think after 20 years in the city

it's just been really nice to be able to have that kind of

wind down time where I'm a bit less

reliant on being at meetings all the time

and actually can structure my day how I want.

One of the things that I love is just puttering around,

doing my own thing, and it's lovely.

It's my day of heaven.

So actually for one of Jeremy's birthdays

he's so difficult to buy presents for

so I actually had a rose garden made for him

and the way it worked was that

each rose started with the letter of his name

and so you could walk down the pathway

and it's spelt out his name.

[smooth jazz music]

Whenever we move into a new house

the kitchen is always a thing that I'd start with.

I love cooking and I come from a kitchen family.

So I really don't mind what goes on in the rest of the house

but as long as my kitchen is just right.

[smooth jazz music]

I tend to like to come in here when I want to be cozy

especially in the winter when it's, you know

a bit gloomy outside and I just want to

watch a bit of TV and relax a bit.

[Jeremy] I'd wanted to have a fabric wall

which I'd never had before

and Susan Deliss went to Paris

and so she just came back with these reams

of soft printed cotton.

When I was quite young and had no money,

I started wanting to collect paintings and pictures

and I always had an affinity with the Bloomsbury artists

and so I got an Augustus John self portrait,

was the first thing I bought at Christie's.

And then a couple of years later a Gwen John

obviously his sister, one of her sketches of cats came up

and then that sort of started

a slow progression of collecting over the years.

[smooth jazz music]

[Simon] One of the great things about this room

is that you can still have a reasonably small dinner

or you can put a big table down the middle

and whether it be in the winter or the summer,

this room really works 'cause you've got

the light in the summer but actually you can make it feel

really cozy in the winter.

[Jeremy] It was good at Christmas

to have Christmas lunch and then play games at that size

so it's quite a good party room.

With the dining chairs, I found some fabric online, on eBay,

and cut it up and stapled it on.

It was a really quick, cheap way

to make those look a bit special.

The wallpaper here is from Lewis and Wood

and it's just really beautiful and soft and muted

and you stare at and obviously you see this deer

and then you stare at a bit longer

and you notice there's unicorns

and it's just such a delicate, pretty, adventurous print.

[smooth jazz music]

[Simon] Well originally we were actually looking at

a different blue for this room

and it was a much more vivid kind of sky blue.

We put the first coat on and it just looked too much

so we thought actually we'd tone it down

and we were gonna have a blue ceiling as well

but we decided to go, just go for the white.

[Jeremy] It's a real mix of finds from all over the place.

So we've got the giant portrait over there

which we inherited with the last house we bought

and had it restored.

And the Peter Hone Plasterwork which I love.

[smooth jazz music]

Susan Deliss spent a lot of time looking at colors

and if they would work leading off all the different rooms.

And even though we wanted each room

to have its own personality

it still also had to have that unified factor.

So, it took a long while to get that right

particularly with a lot of pattern, different colors.

[Simon] Our previous house was very much

a kind of traditional Georgian looking house.

So whereas with this one, we wanted to make it feel

a bit more sort of special, magical.

We just wanted to make sure that each space

worked for the space itself.

[Jeremy] In this room,

I mean we sort of have slightly gone to town with pattern,

there's lots of pattern and lots of it clashes and you

wouldn't necessarily put it together and I like that.

And the Robert Kind wallpaper

that Susan Deliss chose for us is just so pretty.

And then she hand-dyed the linens

and there was antique embroidery used.

Everywhere there's somewhere to look.

And actually, even though we've only been here

less than two years, it looks as if it's a room

that's evolved rather than just appeared overnight.

And I think that's what I like about it.

[smooth jazz music]

[Simon] And then we also have the annex,

which is like a little self-contained cottage outside.

One of the things that I love is

it's got these beautiful skylights in the ceiling

that you really do feel like you're in a kind of

grownup's Wendy house.

[Jeremy] I think what's nice about this area of the garden

is you just sort of disappear into a wood.

The garden just morphs into woodland

and it's just all these paths that cross through

and you hear the bird sound and you totally,

the stress of London and work dissipates within seconds.

And that's what I love about it back here.

[smooth jazz music]