It is rare to find a house where painting and wallpapering afresh will do it few favours. So often decorative overhauls can be transformative, as well as being a way for the owner to put their stamp on a place. But sometimes, there are those houses that require little intervention and call for nothing more than for you to add your personality through belongings rather than interfering with the building’s fabric.
American homeware designer John Derian’s charming 18th-century house on the tip of Cape Cod is one such example, where he has left many of the rooms in the faded 20th century wallpapers, peeling paint and shell and horsehair plaster work that was there when he bought the house in 2007. ‘I couldn’t have created an environment as perfectly patinated,’ reflects John, who originally had contemplated stripping it back and redecorating. He had never been a particular fan of wallpaper and even though the ones here weren’t particularly special or old, he realised that they set the tone, in all their faded glory, for the house. ‘The whole combination of the house feels very transportative to another time,’ he explains. ‘It’s funny, it gave me a lot of freedom by basically doing nothing and just living in it,’ adds John who has put his inimitable stamp on the house through his unique collection of objects. So committed was he to respecting the fabric that he even used existing nails to hang paintings in what he describes as an ‘authentic sporadic manner’.
So quite what kind of house lends itself to not being decorated? And is it possible to live in a room where the paper is peeling around you? John admits that he did a fair bit of ‘invisible’ work to create an environment that was liveable, which of course is something that needs bearing in mind if you’re thinking of preserving the walls as you find them. The line between charming and shabby is but a very fine one. On an aesthetic level, it ultimately boils down to whether somewhere has a strong visual identity, which you cannot help but surrender to. For John, it was the realisation that he could not create anything more perfect; it functions as a palimpsest of the taste of everyone who has lived there since the 18th century. Conservationist Tim Whittaker, former historic buildings expert for the National Trust and former director of the Spitalfields Trust, approached his 17th-century Cumbrian farmhouse with a similar respect for what was there, preserving the original gypsum floors and plastered walls that represent, quite literally, layers of history.
Conservationist Tim Whittaker’s Cumbrian house is a lesson in leaving things as they were designed to be. The staircase and flagstone floor are original to the house. An early nineteenth-century lantern is fixed above the doorway.
Generally speaking, older buildings lend themselves well to little decorating because their quirks give them a strong spirit. As interior designer Patrick Williams, the founder of Berdoulat, points out: ‘In the past, interior design was very much integrated into, and part and parcel of a building’s architecture. Alongside temporary furnishings, the design of the interior was rooted in fixed entities such as decorative mouldings in plaster and timber,’ he says. ‘These carried with them an atmosphere, setting a tone for the spaces they enveloped.’ The best types of period buildings, he adds, are those that haven’t been muddled with. ‘I know I’m not alone in feeling that on entering a period property – and by that I mean one that’s not been messed around with and over “restored” – something about it is just right,’ says Patrick. ‘Is it driven by the comfort one associates with a connection to the past, and to previous generations of people who might have dwelt there? Perhaps. Or are they bound up in smaller, less obvious details, like the radius of a corner, the sound of your footsteps on the floorboards, the play of light across a slightly undulating surface, the smooth texture of a handrail, the worn step tread or dip in the centre of a threshold?’ he questions. ‘I believe that all these elements, however large or small, immediately intangible or imperceptibly subtle, influence a response within our bodies and minds.’ By this logic, keeping a historic interior as you find it, is not just about aesthetics and charm – but also something more spiritual.
That said, new buildings with a strong visual identity and prominent architecture can often require very little decorating. Take artist Michael Craig Martin’s flat on the 21st floor of the Barbican where the original architecture – the black bordered balcony doors – all remained, while the colours and layers were added through Martin’s collection of art and classic Modernist furniture. Michael even kept the tonal grey colour scheme that he inherited from the previous owners, because it worked well and just felt right for the space. ‘I’d never have thought of it, but I think it works beautifully,’ Michael told us. In this respect, it was about not wanting new for the sake of new and observing how the existing decoration worked well.
Put simply, a building with a strong identity and point of view, both old and new, can thrive with very little decorative intervention. It is all about surrendering to the architecture – it’s about how confident you’re feeling and the look you want to achieve.
