Designers' houses

The seaside house designer John Derian shares with his partner Stephen Kent Johnson bears witness to his love of the 18th and 19th centuries and his extraordinary eye for collecting

A Provençal stone farmhouse with its origins in the 17th century and a glamorous past has been renovated by its owner, the furniture designer Victoria Stainow, to create an inviting home and the perfect showcase for the chic pieces she sells through her company

When Joanna Plant and her husband Nick upsized into a semi-detached 1920s house in Acton Town, they were embarking on a decades-long journey to shape and adapt their comfortable family home

Doyenne of fabrics Carolina Irving has turned her eye for texture and print to creating a diminutive but super stylish house full of bottle greens and rusty reds. Her friend, the interior designer Remy Renzullo, explains.

When Joanne Burgess, of The Curious House, bought this house in Henley-upon-Thames, she inherited a senseless layout and a surplus of bedrooms, doors and windows. With ingenuity and imagination, she has transformed it into a bright, characterful home.

When the designer Caroline Riddell and her husband bought a dilapidated 16th century Suffolk longhouse complete with ghost, they set about injecting it with a fresh, friendly spirit

With her signature approach to layering and clever use of colour, Lucy Cunningham has injected personality into her idyllic cottage

Having found this tiny cottage in Oxfordshire five years ago, Victoria Barker has reversed the effects of a characterless renovation to create an irresistibly pretty interior

For interior designer Philip Hooper, joint managing director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, his own house in Somerset offered a rare opportunity for experimentation. Combining bold colour with personal treasures, he has created distinctively different but inviting interiors

Using her unique approach to colour, pattern and antiques, Anna Spiro has created a family home which pays homage to her home city of Melbourne

Decorator Chloe Willis' own London house is not just a showcase of her skills, but a marvel in creating a comfortable country feel in the heart of the city

Light-filled and balanced, this ground floor home is a chic blend of natural woods, earth tones and Scandinavian-influenced design

Enchanted by its idyllic setting, Louise Jones could see the merits of this 16th-century Surrey farmhouse despite its interior having been stripped of any character. With ingenuity and hard work, and the introduction of pattern and colour, she has given it personality in abundance

Involving an ambitious restoration project and a reconfiguring of the layout, James Thurstan Waterworth and Scarlett Supple’s transformation of a Wiltshire farmhouse has resulted in a calm, pared-back interior defined by James’s eclectic antique finds

Behind the ordinary façade of Katie Glaister's 1930s house in south-west London lies an interior full of unexpected colour and personality, enriched by the work of talented artists and craftspeople

Having lighted on his ideal house in the wild Devon countryside, Tom Cox of HÁM Interiors set about making it into a warm and welcoming place to get away, filled with the distinctive art and antiques he has grown up with

The simple lines and rectilinear shapes of her 18th-century rectory left landscape and interior designer Lesley Cooke rapt as she embarked on a two-year campaign of understated modernisation

Interior designer Laura Logan has carved a calm family home out of a jumbled Victorian terrace in Leytonstone, working with EJ Studio to create spaces filled with light

When interior designer Lucinda Griffith fell for a cottage that took her back to her Welsh heritage but was almost beyond her means, she cleverly employed all the tricks of her trade to furnish it in a thrifty, inventive and charmingly inviting fashion