Inside Cath Kidston’s art-filled Notting Hill terrace

When I started Cath Kidston,

I planned for it to be an interiors shop,

and I had a terrible accident.

All my fabric from Eastern Europe arrived made up

into duvet covers and pillowcases.

I obviously couldn't sell it all,

so I chopped it up and made it into product.

The best things come out of happy accidents.

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My decorating style was definitely very influenced

by my childhood, also by my family homes,

like my granny had a beautiful house

that had rooms that John Fowler had done.

Got more interested in design,

I did a brief spell at art school.

I landed this most incredible job working for Nicky Haslam.

He's a very kind, generous person, and you learn so much

if you're interested from an early age,

and I think one of the biggest influences

on my design work are all those memories that I banked.

Love houses that reflect the owners

and have integrity to them.

I've collected a lot of pictures over the years.

Since I was 18, I've been mad

about buying and looking for pictures,

and I bought things from junk shops

and then, you know, really just junky things,

followed by some investments.

This picture, which I really love,

this print by Ellsworth Kelly,

and I love the graphicness of it, and I love red.

It's one of my favorite pictures.

I put this lovely fireplace in from Jamb,

and I luckily found these lovely old Delft tiles.

I found this armchair on Etsy,

and I asked the guy to just cover it in Calico with nails,

and then I put these two pieces

of old French ticking from Katharine Pole,

just thrown over the chair.

It's really nice being on the ground floor,

looking out on the garden, nice light room.

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Down the other end here in the kitchen,

I've made things a bit more contemporary.

Douglas fur floor, very simple modern floor,

which kind of keeps the whole room light,

and we had a lovely joinery company

called Suffolk and Essex Joinery who made us these units,

and I think it's beautiful

how they've even lined up the wood so everything matches.

They're incredible joiners.

My taste in pictures seems to change,

and at the moment, I'm very into looking

at all these old engravings,

and the workmanship is so incredible.

Tend to organize the rooms into colors.

This room was really that sort of pinky lilac theme.

My friend Colin Orchard, he designed these beds.

I had to choose, in a hurry, a color,

got my RAL paint chart out and went for bright red.

When it arrived, I was a bit overwhelmed,

and now I'm really happy it, I really like it.

Also had a collection that we found over the years

of these Ramiro Fernandez Saus pictures,

and the set that I've got here are the story

of the Garden of Eden.

It was a huge purchase.

It's that thing when you're doing up a house

and you have a budget, and it's cooker or pictures,

and you go pictures and then worry about the cooker later.

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For me, it's really important

if a bathroom can have a window,

so I always choose a room where there's natural light.

Nice for me to have space for furniture in the bathroom,

to have a chair, a rug, not have everything built in,

little table by the bath.

Plants in the bathroom is, like, a big tick for me.

Have my geraniums here, and pictures on the wall.

So it's treating it really like an ordinary room.

It's so nice in the bathroom not to have overhead light.

These little lights, which Rosi de Ruig made me

the custom frames with my fabric,

but they're great to be able to have a lamp by the bath.

It's literally the solution for bathroom lighting, I think.

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So we're up on the top floor of the house

in the guest bedroom,

and I like that feeling of being high up

and a bit sunny up here,

and so having started the yellow wallpaper theme,

a pattern from my Joy of Print studio,

little seaweed pattern,

I then found this lovely old quilt,

lovely new lampshades on my old lamps.

One of my favorite places to find things

is still going to Lillie Road in Fulham.

There's one place called Andrew Bewick,

so this yellow chest of drawers would've come from there.

The other thing in this room are the geraniums.

When I launched my C.Atherley products,

we had a whole load of beautiful paper geraniums made.

It really makes a room having the plants in here.

Aren't they beautiful?

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Welcome to the basement of our house,

where we have our sitting room.

This room, there's an extension to it,

which I'm standing in now,

with a skylight which we built on,

and then we knocked through

into what was the old kitchen of the house

and made a double room.

We found this beautiful picture by Oisin Byrne

that came from an exhibition that he had at Connolly.

They have some fantastic shows there.

Nice to have a drink tray.

It's really welcome for people

if you have the space, isn't it?

And then this end, this table is really my desk,

chipboard table my friend Joseph made,

and we play cards here. [chuckles]

I love having a cards evening.

So I think a house that isn't full of books

doesn't feel like home.

Okay, these are my pile of geranium books

I've been collecting.

Love that cover.

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So this is the cozy end of the sitting room

where we watch TV,

and it's, I think of it more as a nighttime room,

'cause I'm usually here in the evening,

but I wanted it to be full of color

and lovely, bright pictures and so on.

I began, I've got a very colorful rug I started with

that I got at the local auction,

and from those colors, I kind of built the room.

I really like layering up prints,

so here I've got the blankets,

these cushions are old friends from Molly Mahon,

and then coming over here on the sofa, I went

for this Blithfield, very, very gentle Peggy Angus fabric,

which I love.

The telly is a work in progress.

This is the thing I always debate with my husband,

where we're gonna put the telly,

of course over the fireplace,

and so I'm gonna make something really beautiful

to cover that with.

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The key driver for me is,

it's always tempting to follow trends

when you're looking at doing a new house,

and I just want it to have timeless bones,

and then if I feel like changing the cushions

or the pictures or things as time goes by,

the house can evolve.

I have a theory it takes seven years

for a house to feel really lived in,

and I feel very settled in here.

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