Lucy Cunningham's Hampshire cottage is a place of considered beauty

‘I can't bear doing my own house, and I think most other decorators feel the same way. You’re too close to it to be objective,’ confesses Lucy Cunningham (though this is perhaps a peculiar feeling for someone who has moved 10 times since 2007). Describing her family as ‘move about-y people,’ Lucy and her husband Duncan knew they needed a house that wouldn’t ‘burden them with renovations’ when they decided to move out of Tetbury. Their next place was to be a purely aesthetic endeavour.

After a few months of hunting, they found the perfect spot in the form of an early Victorian cottage. Nestled in a small Hampshire village, the cottage is one of four originally built for those working on the surrounding hop fields. Little by little, it had been renovated and modernised over the years. ‘A lot of the grotty bits and hard graft had already been done,’ explains Lucy. ‘I think it originally had a tin roof, so it's come a long way!'

Bought by complete chance from the artist Lucy Dickens, mother of Top 100 interior designer Lonika Chande, the house was ‘the first one’ that Lucy felt she could move into and enjoy right off the bat. ‘That’s rare when you’re a decorator,’ Lucy continues. ‘You might like the bones of it, but the interiors are a different matter. I even liked the taps here!’ It was thanks, in part, to the previous resident's occupation as an artist that Lucy knew the house was the one. ‘She had painted most of the walls white to highlight her art, which meant I had time to think about what would work for us and the house,' she explains.

This practically blank canvas allowed Lucy to approach things in a slow and considered way. Feeling her way through the project, she watched the seasons change, garden grow, and light move around the house. She noted how her husband and teenage sons used and interacted with the space, where visitors tended to hover, and reviewed her own requirements for a year before making any decisions. ‘It was a good exercise–and it's one you don't have the privilege of undertaking when you're working with clients.'

Crucial to this period was Lucy’s close collaborator and sounding board Caroline Marcq, of Trilogie Antiques. ‘She’s a dear friend and someone I really admire as a decorator. In fact, she’s a bit of a creative genius,’ Lucy notes. Bouncing ideas off one another, Caroline ‘scoured auctions’ for the right pieces. ‘She had free rein in so many aspects,' continues Lucy, ‘she knows me really well and can pick things out she knows I’ll love.' Indeed, Caroline is cited as the source of many the pieces Lucy uses in her projects, so this house became her opportunity to use Caroline's discerning eye for herself.

The main bedroom was where the duo worked most closely, with Caroline finding ‘the most amazing early 19th-century crewel work curtains.' These became the starting point in the room, providing a foundation on which to build out the scheme. The result is a masterclass in layering; it's an inviting, warm space with striking Jet by Whiteworks paper climbing the walls.