Having designed many adult spaces, turning my hand to designing for families has been a real eye opener. And now that I have three of my own, in addition to our dog, I am becoming more and more obsessed with the challenge of family friendly space.

The first focus for our house had to be the hallway. This is the first thing visitors see when they enter the property, and I want their first impression to be ‘this is nice’, not ‘how to I manouvre past the clutter?!” Therefore storage is paramount. We do not have a huge hallway so designing this in from the start is the key. Firstly, think about what you will need to store in the hall and who will be accessing it (do you want the kids hanging their own coats or not?) Then tailor your design around your needs. Be specific. Shoe storage requires different space and access to cold weather accessories. Make use of every inch and try not to waste space with, for example, long dark cupboards that just act like a black hole sucking up mittens.

For this hallway we used a combination of built in and free standing storage solutions. The understairs space was split into two. The taller section becoming a cupboard for the vacuum cleaner and other large items. In the often wasted corner section, a bespoke shoe drawer houses all the family’s shoes. A vintage settle was bought to sit by the front door. This provides both a place to sit whilst putting on and removing shoes, but also additional storage for bags. A 10 hook coat rack was purchased to hang above the settle, again providing ample space to hang all of the family’s coats, plus leaving additional space for visitors!

Don’t ignore your keys and wallets / purses either! Everyone needs somewhere to dump those little things when they walk through the door. Here we decided against a cast iron radiator for the hallway, but stuck to a cheap wall mounted radiator instead. This allowed us to fit a radiator housing which provides the perfect shelf for all those bits and pieces from everyday life.

Reviewing the colour trends for 2017, I was reassured to see that they often reflected my own prediction for greens.

First Pantone’s colour gurus announced that their colour of 2017 is Greenery. In their words – Manifesting as a “fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring”, Greenery envelops the notion to breathe, reinvigorate and appreciate the great outdoors. As well as greenery, expect to see a rise in deep hues such as khaki and olive green. The interiors experts at Elle Deco have declared their fabric of the moment to be emerald velvet. Working alongside these green tones will be brick reds, maroon brown and charcoal grey to recreate a sense of rich and earthy minerals and materials. The green trend is a natural progression from the leafy, jungle look and the idea of bringing the outside in.

Green is a colour I have shyed away from for many years, I think as a result of my mum’s devotion to it in the 70’s! However, taking a fresh look at how it can be used in a modern scheme got me wanting to try it out. My own palette lends itself much more to the richer hues, which can be used for both walls and woodwork, and I have used them a few times lately. Pairing them with greys brings the scheme bang up to date and they sit well with accent colours such as ochre. The photo below shows a kitchen I had painted in a RAL colour similar to Farrow and Ball’s Studio Green. It is a lovely rich green with a hint of blue. Having used blues and greys a few times in kitchens and seen them adorning every kitchen manufacturer’s marketing, I wanted to try something new, and I love the result. Some of the high end manufacturers have started to use green more too. These images from Plain English illustrate how striking it can be. A beautiful modern take on a very traditional colour.

When researching the ground floor layout for our latest renovation project I spent a lot of time investigating how most of the houses in the locality had been modernised.

Their layouts broadly fitted into two camps:
1. An open plan ground floor with one large living, dining and kitchen space and a separate WC

2. An open plan rear kitchen diner with a separate and rather cutoff living room at the front and a cloakroom either under the stairs or bisecting the living spaces.

Neither of these layout plans seemed to particularly lend themselves to family life.

Firstly, a fully open plan layout undeniably has wow factor, but in many terraced houses can often feel like one long corridor, plus how do you actually live in it? Where does all the inevitable clobber go that you don’t want on show and how do you escape the noise?

Whilst a separate front sitting room undoubtedly solves the noise problem and allows the possibility of separate activities on one floor, it also creates its own difficulties. Firstly the room is undeniably cutoff from the rest of the floor. Also, the middle of the house often feels dark as light cannot flow through the property.

Taking the best parts from both of the above, I have opted for a broken plan layout. This term has been coined for layouts where an open space is loosely divided by partitions, furniture or lighting.

For our development we have taken the intitial layout of a front to back open plan space and inserted a glazed partition incorporating french doors between the sitting room and kitchen. This enables us to close off the two rooms when required but also keep the benefits of open plan – the natural flow through the ground floor plus the transfer of light from the south facing front elevation into the central kitchen area.

Furthermore, we have kept the original kitchen footprint and converted that area into a generous cloakroom and utility room. That way we can ensure there is ample storage space both in the utility and under the stairs, leaving the main spaces free from clutter.