At home with Joanna Plant in her comfortable, timeless interiors | Design Notes

[birds chirping]

[gentle upbeat music]

We came to look at this house 20 years ago.

And we'd said to the estate agent,

show us houses that no one else really wants

to look at, unusual houses.

And this one was unusual probably in its undesirability,

it was very unfashionable.

It's a 1920s house.

People weren't really interested

in those kinds of houses at the time.

I drove past a few times and thought, Hmm, not sure.

But in any case we came and we had a look and we walked

through the front door and straight back into the garden.

And that was the moment, really, that did it.

Nick and I looked at each other sideways

and we knew that this was the house for us.

There was never a plan.

There was never a plan about

how the house was going to be decorated.

There's no scheme as such,

it's just evolved over a good number of years.

I do use the house a little bit as a kind of laboratory.

If I'm thinking about doing something in a project,

I might try it out.

What's interesting, perhaps, is the combination

that Nick has a much more masculine style than I,

probably quite obviously.

But then what happens is that quite nicely tempers anything

that I might push to being a bit too frilly.

Comfort is really key, comfortable rooms,

rooms that you can really enjoy.

I think it works.

This is the sitting room and this sofa we've had

for easily 25 years.

The shape is, sort of, a daybed shape.

I think we do lie on it much more than sit on it.

This is mohair velvet, which is pretty bulletproof,

and mostly because all the dogs we've ever had, sat on it.

And then the cushions here, this is Fortuny fabric made

in Venice, which I really love

but it's so fiercely expensive that really,

this is about as much as I could ever afford.

But I do think that having a little bit of what you love

is what life is all about.

So it's just a big old collection of cushions

and it's definitely for lying on and eating crisps, mostly.

[laughing]

The other sofa is probably about 30 years old

and has been recovered about five times.

That's the sofa that I sit on mostly and it's full of down

and very poofy and super comfy.

The pictures in our house, gosh, I would never be

as, sort of, grand as to say I'm a collector,

but they have been collected.

And there's a mixture of some good things

and some very, very ordinary things.

We change things all the time.

We sell things, things sort of disappear

and then there's an opportunity to buy something else.

We're always fiddling a bit, changing things around,

moving rooms around.

Actually the function of the rooms has changed a little bit.

So what is now, what we rather grandly call the library

was once our office.

There's really nothing nicer than being in here

on a dark, winter's night, it's very enveloping and cozy.

I am a big collector of books.

I've actually got every book I've ever read,

even from a child.

So up there you'll find My Pony Club handbook

and all the Mallory Towers series.

And then also a lot of interior reference books.

This light we bought from Christopher Howe on Pimlico Road.

It's Italian, I think it's just gorgeous.

It's one of my favorite things.

It doesn't have very much light coming out of it

but that's no matter.

It's just such a beautiful thing, I really love it.

And it's gilded metal, bronze I think, comes in there.

[gentle upbeat music]

We decided not to have top cupboards in the kitchen.

It helped make the room feel more like a room

and less like a kitchen.

We've got the rack which has got everything

that gets used every day.

I love that accessibility without, sort of, foraging around

in the back of a cupboard somewhere.

I do operate a little bit of a one in one out system

so that we never accumulate too much clutter.

I love things, but I don't love clutter.

The stainless steel tops really were a practicality choice.

The last thing I wanted was

that feeling of, like, don't touch the worktops.

It's just so unrelaxing for everyone.

So this, kind of, bulletproof nature

of the stainless steel has really served us incredibly well.

It's tempered a little bit by having the marble behind

but it's all just kind of just there

for using and not for worrying about.

Favorite room is probably my laundry room.

[laughing]

It brings the most ridiculous amount of joy,

something about the functionality of it,

that it's just that I like the fact

that it's hidden behind a cupboard.

These lanterns are one to one, life size to scale chalk

and charcoal drawings for lanterns that were proposed

for a church in France.

And I guess they chose one of them.

I don't know which one made the grade

but I just think they're so beautiful.

The detail when you actually, sort of, get

into them is really lovely.

So they're quite masculine

which I think counters the florals

on the other side of the room.

We expanded the lower floor of the house.

So we just spread out a little bit

but it does feel very, sort of, roomy when you come in,

which is quite nice.

These curtains, which are mohair velvet are bordered

in this Robert Kime Carnations fabric,

which I just love the color of it.

This is a English crewel work that I found

in a warehouse in Park Royal.

There were three panels and they're originally

from a four-poster bed, this is the one that I kept.

Two went to a project in Ibiza

and are hanging in absolute resplendent glory

at a lovely client's house there.

I just think it's so unbelievably charming,

the flowers in it, the coloring down at the bottom here.

There's actually a little deer being chased by a hound.

It really is one of my favorite things,

and one of the most special things I think I've ever found

in my whole career.

[gentle upbeat music]

Here we are in my bedroom with this crazy wallpaper

which is a discontinued Laura Ashley paper

from the eighties.

I decided to use it

because I couldn't really hang pictures in here.

Slopy walls made that impossible

and when it was painted, it just felt very, very blah.

So I collected it very, very slowly, roll by roll

when I could find it on eBay.

And then eventually I had enough.

there's no other wallpaper anywhere in the house,

and I wanted you to have that feeling straight away

that you were in a different world.

There's something about the stairs.

I grew up in Oxford in tall Victorian houses,

lots of stairs.

The fact that the pattern goes up over the ceiling,

it's so enveloping.

And I guess it's not for the fainthearted,

but that's the bit I like about it.

So then I thought, okay, curtains, what are they gonna be?

What can stand up to this pattern?

And I carried around a little bit of this paper in my bag

for a really long time, trying to find something

that would work with it.

And eventually I went to Benisson

and this is a pattern of theirs called Chinese Paper.

And it just found all the colors so perfectly.

And then I trimmed it with a little bit of this red binding

so that you just knew where one thing started

and the other stopped.

I also really love my bathroom.

It's the final room in the house when you've gone up

and up and up, it's the last place.

It is only my bathroom, no one else uses it.

And then I feel very, sort of, safe in there.

[gentle upbeat music]

I think it's not a precious house in any way,

it's a shoes on, dogs on the sofa.

Everything is robust enough to cope.

And I think that's really important

to make people feel comfortable.

Somebody once said that I make houses

that you feel you could have a good time in

which was such a lovely thing to say.

I really hope it's true.

Judging by the length of time people stay

when they come over, I think it might be.

[gentle upbeat music]