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Tour Sarah Vanrenen’s Cozily Layered Wiltshire Farmhouse

Jill Simpson — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 21:28:55 +0000

“I never really feel comfortable sitting in a room that is absolutely perfect, where everything matches,” says British interior and textile designer Sarah Vanrenen. “It’s got to have a kind of organic feel.” As she says of her own 300-year-old farmhouse in Wiltshire, England, “It’s lived-in, it’s real, it’s colorful.”

The large farmhouse, originally three separate cottages, belonged to her husband’s grandmother. It was the perfect blank slate for Vanrenen’s layered approach to decorating, with rooms cocooned in color, laden with patterned fabrics and wallpaper, with artwork covering every wall. “I crave color. It feeds my soul,” she says. “Color makes rooms feel inviting and warm and comfortable.” There also needs to be visual relief, she notes, some neutral contrast. “I think a house can definitely have too much stuff,” she cautions, “but I don’t think a house can ever have too much art. Art says everything about the person who lives in a house, and when it’s hung well, adds huge character.”

Vanrenen opened up the ceiling of the primary bedroom to the rafters, and wrapped everything in her “Dotty” flower-strewn wallpaper and fabric, adding the canopy bed she’d always coveted.

“When I’m decorating a room, I do it like I’m starting a painting,” she explains, starting with wall color, and then bringing in different patterns and furnishings to see what works best together. “There’s got to be big pattern, small pattern, and then a bit of space around it that lets it breathe.”

Come tour Vanrenen’s warm and welcoming home and see why, she says, “When it’s at its best and my family are here and we’re all sitting around the kitchen table having lunch or supper, it’s the happiest I can ever be.”

Vanrenen in the meadow outside the 300-year-old Wiltshire farmhouse where she and her husband live.

The post Tour Sarah Vanrenen’s Cozily Layered Wiltshire Farmhouse appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

Tour a Nashville Home With Sophisticated Holiday Style

Jill Simpson — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:35:42 +0000

Interior designers Ann Shipp and Roger Higgins met in design school 30 years ago. They found their skills and talents complemented each other’s well—in both work (at their firm, R. Higgins Interiors) and life. Their current home was an erstwhile 1950s ranch house in the Belle Meade neighborhood of Nashville that they dramatically transformed into a gracious, spacious home. At Christmastime, the home’s sophisticated palette of taupes, creams, and gray-blues with pops of chartreuse is the perfect backdrop for lush green garlands and wreaths, accents of gold, and a tree with shimmering glass ornaments. “We don’t use anything with too much color—it’s pretty much green, white, and brown” says Shipp of their holiday palette.

Their most-used and most-loved room is the library/den, where they opened up the nine-foot ceilings to create a wood-paneled, barrel-vaulted ceiling that echoes the golden leather of the antique books lining shelves, making the room exceptionally warm and inviting. The existing slate floor “was something I wanted to save, and it prompted the color palette,” says Higgins, inspiring the rich blue-gray wrapping the walls, millwork, and curtains.

“I like to do dining room walls in a deep color because I think it enhances the intimacy,” says Higgins of these charcoal walls, accented with a chartreuse tablecloth. He painted the large artwork himself “in about 30 seconds” before a dinner party.

Through years of doing Christmas decorations for their clients, Higgins and Shipp have learned many tips and tricks. “I love the smell of fresh greenery,” says Higgins, but given the length of the holiday season, “I like using things that will hold up and look good, but I don’t want it to look fake.” Their secret: “We mix different types of greenery together and then add real pinecones.” Join Higgins and Shipp on this inspiring tour of a home that shines at the holidays—and year-round.

The post Tour a Nashville Home With Sophisticated Holiday Style appeared first on Frederic Magazine.