If you’ve followed along here a while, you know I’m smitten with all things Kit Kemp. The Britist designer and hotelier has my design heart snagged hook, line and sinker. And her latest book, Design Secrets: Adding Character and Style to an Interior to Make It Your Own, has my ticker pounding a precocious pitapat all over again.
Like Kit’s other books, this volume profiles various artists whose work adds personality and character to the Firmdale Hotels Kit owns with her husband Tim. But she goes a step further and shows us the how-to behind some of the looks she’s famous for creating and promoting.
Like her bodacious beds
Over-sized, sometimes uniquely shaped, and often wildly upholstered and embellished headboards are in right now. You see them in all the design magazines from so many of the top designers. But it was KIT who made them “it.”
And in this volume she tells you how she does it and–more importantly–how YOU can do it in your own home.
But where to begin any design venture?
Kit suggests with fabric, which all Kit Kemp rooms have in abundance, pattern upon pattern upon pattern upon texture upon color. In the photo above, I’m guessing she started with the bold print on the sofa.
“Finding a main fabric that you love will provide guidance for the rest of the room and will establish its ‘rhythym.’ Large-scale fabrics might be scary, but they provide a focal point–acting like a ‘canvas’–for a room. When in doubt, use plain colours and fabrics on the perimeter of the room and add the pattern and detail to the central pieces…”
As in this hotel room, where the creams surround the splashier prints on the bed and seating. To me, the drapery fabric resembles flower seed packets and accents the larger, more color-saturated print on the coverlet.
And sometimes “fabric” is not what’s on the beds or sofas. I’m guessing the main “fabric” in the room below was the wallpaper, and the room’s story grew out of it, like a fairytale come to life.
“Once your key fabric has been identified ,it is possible to mix different patterns of varyng sizes. Use one fabric with a large-scale pattern, one medium-scale and one small scale–together, these pieces of the puzzle will come together to create a single beautiful creation.”
Add color and character because…
Because color makes us happy, of course.
And character, which comes from the addition of the handmade, because “the thoughtfulness and character of a lovingly made object is worth a million times more than an accessory that has no meaning or soul.”
And that soul is in this text
True to her word, Kit has chocked this volume full of handmades she sources for her hotel decor to get the reader’s imagination going. She references incorporating vintage textiles into projects and embellishing existing fabrics with embroidery, applique and beads. She also includes DIY projects, such as potato-block printing on table linens, patchwork lampshades, patterns for paper puzzles, painted treasure boxes and more.
And the final few pages include full-color photos alongside its black-and-white equivalent sketches that seem to call out for the reader to color them, whether to match the photo or to create a whole new look.
This book truly is about what Kit promises at the outset: “How to make your house fabulously different and as unique as you are.”
You’ll want to get started, PRONTO.
If you want more…
Use the (affiliate) links below to browse and perhaps buy Kit Kemp’s books.