Wow! House

I was honoured to be asked by Sanderson Design Group to design a bedroom for London’s inaugural Wow! House event at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour. The brief was slightly daunting - design a large bedroom using only fabrics and paints from Sanderson’s excellent Morris & Co. range. I love William Morris’ designs, but they are so familiar to us all, I wondered how I could I make them feel interesting and new.

I puzzled over the challenge for a bit, but the breakthrough moment was when I found a Morris & Co fabric called “Bamboo”, which was based on a design by E.W. Godwin. Although it was on linen, I knew it was originally a wallpaper design because I’d happened to see it before (it’s in the V&A collection). So when I asked if we could paper-back the fabric, and Sanderson agreed, everything else came together quickly.

My goal with the fabric choices in this room was to play with hot and cold (the walls, fireplace and brown furniture being the “hot” elements and the blue and green tones being the “cold” ones). I thought it would be important to create a kind of tension that way. I also wanted a bit of tension in terms of the overall vibe. The room definitely had to feel “trad”, since I thought that would be the best reflection of the brand’s heritage, but it also had to feel original and new. Hopefully the balance between hot and cold and trad and new has worked! Although the room was only up for a month, it was such a fun project to work on.