It’s not often that a designer gets hired solely for their talents at decorating children’s bedrooms, but it does happen. And in Emma Ainscough’s case, that’s exactly what occurred when she was approached by a young American family at the tail end of 2024. ‘They had seen a project I did in Clapham for another young family and I had gone to town in the kids’ bedrooms,’ says Emma. ‘They loved the whole house, but were particularly engaged with the wallpapered, British sensibility in those rooms.’ The family were moving to the UK from Boston and were anxious about how their young children would cope with the change. ‘They were keen to do something whimsical and magical for them and had decided the best way forward was to entice them with really great bedrooms,’ Emma says.
With the children due to start their new schools in September, Emma was given a hard deadline of August to have the house ready. ‘It was a very fast turn-around from signing on to the project to completion. Whilst we didn’t move any walls, a lot of the flooring was looking very tired and the whole house needed rewiring. There were also aesthetic changes we wanted to make, like switching out the 30 plus spotlights in every room.’ With her clients still in Boston, Emma embarked upon a ‘bizarre new process’, meeting on Zoom to decide on schemes instead of in person. ‘I usually find it valuable to make physical, malleable moodboards so the client can see the layering process and really buy into how something adds or subtracts from a room, but with this project I was just holding up fabric samples to the camera. It was definitely a bit of a challenge to make all those big decisions quickly and online.’ This was not just a one way street, as the clients also spent a lot of time holding up their works of art to Emma, who then had to deduce where they might look best from a grainy image on a screen. ‘They had over 120 pieces of art and in the end I had to print out scale photos of each of them to gauge best fit. You really do need the context of a room when it comes to placing paintings and photographs.’
The Bert & May floor tiles here were chosen to blend seamlessly with the kitchen tiles, just with a little more flair. The dining table is the ‘Refectory Table’ from Konk Furniture, with a character oak top and walnut legs. It is paired with Neptune’s ‘Kenilworth’ dining chairs in cactus. The banquette bench is a bespoke design by Emma and has been upholstered in Beata Heuman’s ‘Canyon Mohair’.
Dean Hearne
The selection of furniture proved another novel experience for Emma. ‘Because the family were moving with nothing but art, books and a piano, the entire house needed furnishing,’ she explains. ‘We knew we wanted to go bespoke for a lot of the items – and one of the non-negotiables I was given was a very comfortable sofa in the snug and two welcoming armchairs in the primary bedroom.’ However, meeting those needs remotely was incredibly difficult. ‘How do you show someone what something feels like to sit on?’ Emma laughs. Cue an amusing series of photographs sent to the client from Tallboy Home in Yorkshire, who were crafting the bespoke seats for the family. ‘The entire team got involved in trying to demonstrate how cosy the furniture was,’ Emma recalls. ‘It was a very unusual way of working.’
One of the trickiest pieces to get right was the sofa for the snug, an awkwardly shaped room tucked away in the back of the house. ‘The house has a lot of long interconnected rooms and the clients were adamant that they did not want a TV to dominate them,’ explains Emma. ‘So we had to arrange this anomalous small room to fit a large four-person sofa and a television.’ Putting pen to paper, Emma designed the sofa to sit neatly in the bay window, articulated at just the right angle, with curved ends to ensure it didn’t dominate too much. Once the sofa shape was set in stone, it was time to think about colour. ‘I went for a much darker, bolder wall than I would in a space that isn’t a bedroom. The client was up for embracing something a bit different and it makes a nice contrast to the rest of the house. I think it’s great having one pocket of saturated boldness.’ However, not everyone immediately understood the vision. ‘The company making the sofa rang me about three times to check that the fabrics were right. They couldn’t believe I had sent this combination of material.’ says Emma with a smile. ‘But once the sofa was completed, they messaged me again to admit, “You are really good with colour.”’