{"id":526155,"date":"2026-04-12T02:11:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526155\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T02:11:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:11:30","slug":"go-on-holiday-with-interiors-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526155\/","title":{"rendered":"go on holiday with interiors experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interior design used to be a solitary activity, where homeowners in search of inspiration leafed through the pages of Elle Decoration, or scrolled endlessly through Houzz and Pinterest. But with the recent rise in experience-based travel, aesthetically minded homeowners are ditching conventional holidays \u2014 sunbathing and pi\u00f1a coladas \u2014 and embarking on design-led pilgrimages, where creativity and colour-mixing comes with comfortable en suites. <\/p>\n

Driven by their love of interiors, with their hands held by expert designers and artists, they roam flea markets in Turin<\/a>, learn colour confidence and Islamic design in the souks of Marrakesh<\/a>, master decorative printmaking techniques in the heat of the subcontinent, or explore the nuances of contemporary art in the hip galleries of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

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Go baroque in Italy<\/p>\n

\"High-angleKate Watson-Smyth runs design retreats that include tours of her Italian villa and trips into Turin, aboveSergio Formoso\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

With 22 Unesco-protected palazzos built by the royal Savoy dynasty in the 16th century, the northwest region of Piedmont is littered with baroque inspiration. The interior designer and author Kate Watson-Smyth runs a three-day design retreat<\/a> here, inviting guests into her 24-room villa for inspiration for \u00a34,200 per person, all inclusive. \u201cI probably shouldn\u2019t say this,\u201d says Watson-Smyth, \u201cBut the palazzos in Turin make Versailles look a bit like a council house. The gold and the decoration are extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bought during lockdown, Watson-Smyth\u2019s villa is in a cosy rural village near Turin. But guests actually stay in the NH Torino Lingotto\u00a0Congress hotel, a former Fiat factory and 1920s modernist gem designed by the architect Giacomo Matt\u00e8-Trucco. Its roof still has the racetrack used in the 1969 film The Italian Job, as well as the Pinacoteca Agnelli, a gallery housing the personal collection of the Agnelli family (founders of Fiat) filled with works by Matisse, Canaletto and Picasso.<\/p>\n

\"AWatson-Smyth, centre in black top, leading one of her retreatsKate Watson Smyth<\/p>\n

The retreats \u2014 the next one is May 8-12 \u2014 are \u201cabout gaining a deeper understanding of personal style and how to achieve it\u201d, Watson-Smyth says. Days are spent exploring the inner workings of her villa (which she is still renovating \u2014 six of the 24 rooms are finished), workshopping individual ideas, quaffing coffee in Turin\u2019s oldest caf\u00e9, Al Bicerin, and delving into Il Gran Balon, an enormous vintage market. \u201cWe want them to go home with a starting point, whether it\u2019s a silk scarf or some Murano lights. It\u2019s subconsciously immersive,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is a lot of teaching to adapt things to your own homes. You don\u2019t want to create a pastiche of an Italian palazzo; you can\u2019t put that in a modern house on a cul-de-sac in the UK. But that\u2019s not to say they can\u2019t pick some richer colours or adapt elements. It\u2019s not going to be Versailles, but they\u2019re taking something from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meet artisans in Marrakesh<\/p>\n

\"ASophie Robinson\u2019s interior retreats include visits to local rug marketsJudd Brotman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to snap out of your creative coma.\u201d So says Sophie Robinson, an interior designer and television host nicknamed the queen of colour. For the past three years she has been running interior retreats<\/a> in Marrakesh (from \u00a33,523) with El Fenn,<\/a> a colour-drenched hotel co-founded by Marrakesh Biennale\u2019s Vanessa Branson, Richard\u2019s sister. \u201cIt\u2019s good to get out of your lane, to feel alive and have your senses and synapses lit up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under turquoise skies, Robinson reveals the city\u2019s artisanal heartbeat: hand-tufted rug makers, zellige tile producers such as Popham, leather workers, copper beaters and wood carvers, and more than 100-year-old ceramic producers including Serghini. There are also private tours of \u201creal\u201d homes, including the riad owned by the 1960s actress and model Marisa Berenson. <\/p>\n

\"CollageThe colour-drenched interiors at the El Fenn hotel in Marrakesh Cecil Treal<\/p>\n

Interior designers often attend alongside home-curious guests; Robinson instructs them all to bring measurements, fabric and paint swatches to keep design plans on track. While interiors shopping abroad, \u201cSome things travel better than others,\u201d Robinson cautions. \u201cRugs look great in British homes, and pottery \u2014 I use safi cups as flower vases, or in the bathroom \u2014 but I wouldn\u2019t buy an entire dinner service, and any lighting needs to be entirely rewired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get arty in the Big Apple<\/p>\n

\"WillowWillow Kemp takes her guests on personalised art walks through ManhattanQuentin Bacon<\/p>\n

Willow Kemp describes the city of New York as \u201cone of the most compelling design objects imaginable\u201d. The daughter of Kit Kemp, the boutique hotel queen, Willow is an interior designer, art ambassador to Firmdale Hotels, architect and sculptor. She is taking guests on personalised art walks through SoHo, Midtown and Tribeca, taking in the works she has curated inside the Crosby Street, the Whitby or the Warren Street hotels. <\/p>\n

\u201cNew York offers an intensity, scale and momentum that feels very different from Europe. There\u2019s a sense that art is happening now, at full volume,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\"WillowThe tours include a stop at the Whitby, where Kemp has curated numerous artworks Quentin Bacon<\/p>\n

Tours \u2014 the first one is May 9, at \u00a395 a person<\/a> \u2014 will begin at breakfast, looking at artworks in the hotel, detailing an artist, the framing and arrangement. \u201cWe talk about placement, how to hang it in a period home or a contemporary space \u2014 I want people to experience how art has the power to create an atmosphere,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The group go on to the Morgan Library & Museum, the New Museum or Timothy Taylor Gallery. \u201cWhen you explore galleries there, you feel the city\u2019s restless energy reflected in the work \u2014 urgent, experimental and alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discover colour in India<\/p>\n

\"TheThe City Palace overlooking Lake Pichola in Udaipur, RajasthanVladimir Sklyarov\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In Rajasthan, northwestern India, the artist and colour expert Annie Sloan encourages guests on her furniture-painting retreat to bring a suitcase big enough to accommodate, among other things, a \u201csmall cabinet\u201d. Each locally made cabinet forms the foundation of the six-day workshop, which Sloan hosts at the Bujera Fort in Udaipur, alongside rug paint-stencilling, block-print making and papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 decorating. \u201cI want visitors to discover colour and understand heritage, via the whole background of India and how it influences interiors,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Alongside evening cocktails and morning yoga, Sloan takes visitors on a tour of the 450-year-old City Palace Museum and into the studio of the local artist Rajesh Soni. For February\u2019s retreat, guests flew in from New Zealand, Australia, Cape Town, Romania, the Cayman Islands, the US and the UK to learn from her and the designer Tristan Merriam.<\/p>\n

\"AAnnie Sloan, second from right, with her guests in RajasthanAnnie Sloan<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about [guests] getting in the zone and being allowed to forget time, politics and the horrible boringness of reality, to discover their own creativity,\u201d Sloan says. \u201cPeople connect with themselves while having the time to paint and look at things. We teach them simple ideas, they\u2019re not artists, and some are scared stiff. But I love it when they say, \u2018I didn\u2019t realise I was creative.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sloan says each piece made will work at home back under the grey skies of Blighty. \u201cThe colours we use, like paprika red or Frida blue, you find in rugs, fabrics and paintings; they sit well in all interiors, nothing would look weird. And people tend to stick to the same tones. They really do carry their own palettes in their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Interior design used to be a solitary activity, where homeowners in search of inspiration leafed through the pages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-526155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}