The warm, inviting family home of a designer known for cool interiors
There are interior designers – more than a few in the US – who change their own interiors every three years. It is a way to show they are abreast of the latest trends – and helps, too, if the redesign appears in magazines. So it seems like heresy for Susie Atkinson to admit she has done almost nothing to her kitchen – and other rooms in her house – for 20 years.
During her time bringing cool (and warmth) to several of the Soho House clubs, Susie would rejoice in being described as ‘the interior designer you won’t have heard of ’, though that cover was blown when her designs for the Lime Wood and Beaverbrook hotels were received with joyous plaudits. The joke was that Susie had been working on projects all the while for a returning roster of showbiz and mediabiz stars on condition of the strictest secrecy. ‘I’m known for my hotel work, but whether it’s a hotel, a club or a private house, you want people to find something interesting to look at in a relaxed atmosphere,’ she says.
Arriving at the immaculate white gates of the Hampshire house Susie shares with her husband Justin feels rather like stepping into historic Williamsburg. Garden rooms are bounded by perfectly trimmed hedges on stilts and tall domes of beech enclose a formal box garden that leads to the front door. Yet once you are inside, every semblance of showpiece falls away – it feels like a warm and welcoming home.
When Susie and Justin arrived 22 years ago, the original part – a tiny two-up, two-down cottage built in 1846 – had been expanded into a large, somewhat rambling house, with a galley kitchen and a narrow hall with a vertiginous staircase. ‘We gutted the house,’ explains Susie. ‘We created two new staircases and a large kitchen, ideal for family life – the youngest of our children [now 29, 27 and 23] was only one.’ Susie has managed the low kitchen ceiling by breaking it up with battens at regular intervals, which seem to alleviate its lack of height. An antique kitchen table stands on a blue-striped dhurrie, surrounded by Susie’s own ‘Craftmaker’s’ chairs.
Five years ago, one simple change she made was to open up the kitchen to the drawing room with openings on either side of the table. ‘It made all the difference,’ she says. ‘We love entertaining and this is an ideal space.’ She chafes at the fact that the drawing room – the outline of which is unchanged from the arrangement created by the previous owners – is lopsided, with the chimneypiece opposite the bay french windows and a narrow part at the back, without the bay and with the arched doorway leaving less usable space, which she has furnished with an L-shaped sofa. ‘I keep thinking of adding on a glazed garden room, which would extend out beyond the french windows behind the blue sofa, to balance the space,’ says Susie. She has kept the colours in the room light, to focus attention on the garden, where there is a stream and a swimming pool, set in a mix of formal and meadow-like areas. Every room in the house has a view over its intense green.
The central core of the house, bounded by the two staircases, is painted in ‘Leather III’ by Paint & Paper Library. This includes the panelling under the main staircase and a curve of tulipwood tongue-and-groove around the walls of the spiral kitchen staircase. Beside each of the staircases is a charming lingering place, a comfortable chair and – as everywhere in the house – marvellous artwork and craft pieces.
Susie cannot help collecting. There is a grid of Jo Waterhouse collages, bought years ago, in one daughter’s bedroom; pieces by Aldermaston Pottery are displayed on the kitchen chimneypiece; and a pair of delightful framed Fifties table mats, found at Jenna Burlingham Gallery, hang on the kitchen staircase wall. The upper landing wall is covered in 28 framed cases of shells hung in a grid pattern. And on shelves above the blue-painted bath in the guest bathroom there are more shells. ‘They were collected by the children and the bath salts jar was my mother’s. I had to hang on to them,’ says Susie.
In the spare room next door, a small-repeat wallpaper pattern makes a background for floral curtains. Beyond, a corridor bedroom – which connects the spare room with the landing but can be enclosed by a door at either end – with bunk beds for visiting friends’ children, completes the ideal guest set-up. Susie has used small-repeat wallpapers in other bedrooms, too, and in the dressing-room corridor, picking up their colours in the curtains. However, in the family bathroom, a larger-scale wallpaper of birds and flowers gives a warm glow to the space, in which a 19th-century bamboo table stands beside the generous basin. An exception to the wallpaper theme is one of Susie’s son’s bedrooms, which is lined with Shaker panelling and wall pegs, a clever solution when he was a teenager and did not feel like picking up and folding clothes (what teenager ever does?) – and just as useful today when he is home for the weekend. ‘Don’t even look in there,’ Susie says with a laugh.
She has just finished working on a modern Soho flat with a sitting room she describes as ‘the size of a tennis court – I’m not kidding’. She is designing more members’ clubs, as well as houses in Greece, Holland, the US and Scotland – interiors we shall probably never see. However, what excites her most is her new collection of wallpaper and chic paper borders. ‘Younger members of my team ask, “What’s a border?”, but this is a new take on Eighties borders, reimagined in contemporary designs and colours with much more impact. Our horizontal stripe under the nosing of a painted staircase looks fantastic.’
And there cannot be many interior designers’ homes where the pencil markings of children’s heights can be seen on the kitchen door jamb. ‘It’s a home, not a showpiece,’ Susie declares. Heresy or not, it makes for happiness. This is a good place to live.
Susie Atkinson is a member of The List by House & Garden, our essential directory of design professionals. Find her profile here.
Susie Atkinson: susieatkinson.com
Michael Sinclair1/4Galbraith & Paul’s ‘Birds’ wallpaper is the background for The Water Monopoly basin
Michael Sinclair2/4An antique rug from Foster & Gane and an Egyptian watercolour from Talisman Fine Art provide a subtly colourful contrast to the pale Arabescato marble and joinery by Olive Tree Renovations
Michael Sinclair3/4Curtains in Vanderhurd’s ‘Flower Stencil’ linen in aquamarine/moonstone pick up on the headboard in Michael S Smith’s ‘Breeze’ linen/cotton in autumn
Michael Sinclair4/4A Perennials’ stripe lifts the cushions on Vincent Sheppard loungers.
