As sudden life changes go, giving up a senior job at the same time as swapping city life for the quiet of the countryside sounds dramatic. Yet long before the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated such lifestyle trends – 14 years ago in fact – that was exactly what Emma Sherlock, an interior designer, did, when she left London. “It was a big adjustment, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it all in one go, but it’s all worked out brilliantly,” she says.
Sherlock had worked as promotions director for Vogue for 13 years, but living in a flat in Hammersmith, with her husband and their two young sons, the desire for more space and freedom eventually took over. “There came a time where I just wanted to open the back door and let the children out and not have to go to the park,” she explains. She also had one eye on a career pivot into interior design.
She grew up in Hampshire, so she and her husband, Jamie Sherlock, began circling the Bourne Valley, an area with picturesque countryside, good schools and a reliable commute back into the capital (Jamie kept his job in the City). It took a year of viewings for them to land on this brick and flint cottage. “I really wanted something that was quite charming and pretty, but I didn’t want a thatched cottage. And I didn’t want to be in something that was too dark. What appealed was the house’s L-shaped layout, and that we didn’t need to spend a huge amount of money on building work,” explains Sherlock.
A self-confessed townie, she admits she missed the convenience of “toddling out to get a sandwich at lunchtime” in the early days. (A coffee machine given to her by her mother, who lives half an hour away, proved to be a much-needed luxury). The couple had their third child, Octavia, a couple of years later, and Sherlock threw herself into decorating the house.
A change in style
While the family’s London flat was whitewashed and much more minimal in style, here she leaned into the cottage aesthetic, favouring soft colours and chintzy fabrics. “Cosy” was a sentiment she kept coming back to. But the rooms weren’t transformed overnight; the decorating has been gradual and intentional. “The house has layered over time; you don’t find all of the pieces for your home immediately. I’m a big believer that a house is always evolving,” says Sherlock.
As local friends began seeking out her advice for decorating their homes, Sherlock launched her eponymous interior design studio in 2016. “I’d always had an interest in design and in English country houses, and I’d studied a year of architecture at university, which proved incredibly useful,” she says. “It meant I could draw, find my way through a floor plan, draw pelmet shapes to scale and position wall lights in a bedroom.” A space in which to experiment, her own home, filled with hand-me-downs and clever decorative tweaks, is an ongoing labour of love.
The cosiest of living rooms
Sherlock’s favourite space is the sitting room. It’s a naturally dark room because of its orientation, so the plaster-pink walls, painted in Pink Ground by Farrow & Ball, help to warm it up. The trio of windows is dressed in curtains which belonged to Sherlock’s late grandmother – “a very glamorous lady” – and which had been in storage since the 1970s.
“It turns out that they’d had some wonderful decorator [Dudley Poplak, who was once hired by Princess Diana] do their house in Surrey. They are beginning to slightly disintegrate in places, but I don’t really mind,” says Sherlock. The vintage Turkish rug has a varied palette which has made picking fabrics out for armchairs and cushions easy. “A lot of people on Instagram admire my sitting room and question why it works so well. The key to it, quite simply, is the rug,” says Sherlock.
Over the years she has splurged on fabrics by Braquenié and Colefax & Fowler to cover the sofas and armchairs by David Seyfried and Recoire: “The fuchsia print is very old-fashioned, but I don’t think it ever grows old,” she says. “There’s something really positive and cheery about it.”
A kitchen cleverly updated on a budget
The kitchen displays Sherlock’s approach to spending on cosmetic improvements rather than expensive structural tweaks. As the room has low ceilings, she removed all the wall cabinets and the extraction fan. She then injected some charm by adding tongue-and-groove panelling and hand-finished delft tiles – authentic touches which look as if they have always been there. The grey worktop, which she thinks is Corian, wouldn’t have been her choice but is of good quality, so she painted the cupboards below it green, “so that the colour of it becomes lost”. She then upgraded the cabinets further with new brass knobs. A vintage cupboard (painted in Farrow & Ball’s bold Rectory Red) filled with china, alongside a collection of wall-hung plates, make the room feel homely and personal. Blinds in Soane’s Scrolling Acanthus fabric were a characterful indulgence.
A bedroom to please both sexes
Sherlock was fixated on using an unapologetically chintzy floral fabric by Lee Jofa for her bedroom’s curtains. “I thought, gosh, is my husband going to be tipped over the edge by this floral bedroom?” she chuckles. Her solution was to temper the lively pattern with a pared-back wallpaper she has long admired: a paisley print by Howe. She finds the colour green “optimistic and uplifting”, so she painted the bedside tables a dark shade, to match the colour in the curtains. The striped headboard, in Cinny London’s Arthur Stripe, adds a crispness to the scheme: “It knocks everything back a bit and settles the chintz down.”
A fairytale boudoir
Stately four-poster beds are a signature in country houses, but in a more diminutive cottage, a canopy bed is a smart compromise. The half-tester and valance in Octavia’s room were made using bolts of linen from Jamie’s late-grandmother’s linen factory in northern France. “It elevates the room height and looks good structurally, and it’s also lovely to be in,” says Sherlock. The rug, patchwork quilt and bamboo desk were inexpensive antique-shop finds which injected even more charm into the room.
A bathroom to banish the winter blues
“I’m not a big fan of the English winter – I attack it with vengeance,” laughs Sherlock. Ensuring that her home “feels like a cocoon” helps, so “the Sanderson Summer Strawberries wallpaper, on a really miserable January morning, cheers me up”. Perhaps controversially, carpet was also non-negotiable: “I’m a child of the Eighties, and I love carpet in a bathroom,” she says. “Lots of people find it horrifying, but I can wake up in the morning and pad around in my pyjamas and my feet are never cold.”
The ‘why not?’ approach
Visiting Sherlock’s downstairs loo is a memorable experience. “It’s quite cheery. I just thought, why not?” says the designer, who chose Warm Stone paint by Edward Bulmer, and a collection of framed nature-themed prints which line one wall.
Emma Sherlock’s five tips on modern country decorating
Invest in the fundamentals – and don’t rush
I would tell anyone moving home to buy a really comfortable sofa and bed before anything else. The rest of it can come later. A house develops over time, so it’s a good idea to live in it for a bit before you start spending any money on it.
The holy trinity
The most important things in rooms are pictures, rugs and books. Rugs add real depth to a room and if they don’t work, the beauty is that you can swap them out or put them somewhere else. And I always say to my clients, buy pictures that you really love looking at. They don’t have to be expensive.
Embrace the old
Decorating a house is expensive, so if people give you things, they can be super useful and sometimes, the best thing to start with. Whether it’s a set of plates or a lamp, a piece that’s been handed down can add charm, personality and a bit of originality.
Don’t choose paint colours in isolation
When choosing paint shades, you have to think about whether you see the room in question from another room, and what the flow is going to feel like. Are they all talking to each other? Are you in the same palette, and is it all going to sit together well?
Keep things moving
A part of decorating that I enjoy is the layering and changing things around. It’s invigorating. You don’t need to move house. You need to move your your pictures around!