Inside Rita Konig’s London house, a wonderful combination of two flats

[gentle piano music]

I've got divorced

and bought the flat upstairs, turned 50.

I think it is this sort of deadly age

that's coming towards you

and you feel like you are going to sort of wizen overnight

and turn into an old lady.

And that doesn't happen.

And it was really fantastic, actually.

I sort of felt much more grounded

and myself and grown up.

[gate latch clicks]

[gentle piano music continues]

It's certainly 10 or 12 years

since I first decorated this flat.

And before, it was really the sort of pulled-together flat

that I'd made when I was single into a family home.

It didn't work anymore. It wasn't fit for purpose.

When we did the renovation,

Margot and I went around the house

photographing all the bits that we liked.

It was quite emotional. [chuckles]

There wasn't the sadness of leaving a place,

but I was aware that we were going to be

sort of rubbing a lot out.

The major change was buying the flat upstairs.

So it was really the connecting of the two flats,

that we've got two bedrooms upstairs

and now the ground floor is all living space.

I couldn't do anything until I was divorced.

That gave me all this time to work out

where everything was gonna go.

And imagining that that life being lived.

[birds chirping]

In this house, the palette,

when all of my packets were out on the table,

they all run together like a sort of river

while each room has a quite a different feeling.

The first thing I started with

was this Rose Cummings chintz.

And I love having a sort of hero fabric

that will bring everything together.

And then I was worried it was getting a bit old

and a bit sort of fuddy.

So I've got this lovely olive Namay Samay on the chair.

And then I used this zebra to try and give it a bit of fun.

It was a very old American print

and it sort of also reminded me

of those are old Upper East Side apartments.

And then I brought in my batik

that I've just done for Schumacher.

And I love the batiks

because they just do slip in everywhere.

These cushions weirdly are sort of old friends.

I quite like those surprises,

the things that you weren't planning on.

Well, I knew when I moved back

that I didn't want to smother the walls again

with pictures like I'd done before,

and that I wanted it to be a bit more spare.

You start with one.

I wanted to put this big picture that Honor,

my best friend, had given me when I married.

I loved those very fluorescent colors on the brown.

So I started with that

and then had these quite contemporary things either side.

I changed the fireplace and put in a chair rail.

We changed the doors.

They were really too small for the room

and it took me quite a long time to realize, you know,

when I moved in it wasn't something

I was paying attention to.

And as time went by, so I was like,

Oh these doors are so mean in this big room.

This was one of the big changes,

these paneled reveals.

And when people walk in here, they're always like,

Oh my god, I feel like I've just walked

into a house in the country.

And that, I think,

is the subliminal feeling of these panels.

So they're all lots of things

that you sort of barely notice,

but they make a huge difference.

So this is just the next turn of the dial of depth

and luxury and sophistication.

And so that was what I really wanted to be able to show

in a room rather than on a sample.

Especially the specialist painting in here,

which is this very pretty

and very delicate sort of combed faux bois.

I put this bookcase in

that had been a chest of drawers before

with a picture above it.

This time we did these French doors,

which has made a huge difference

because the garden was quite cut off from the sitting room.

Previously, the dining room table was here.

This was the kitchen and main entrance.

So I started with this wallpaper,

which was designed by a friend of mine, Mia Reay.

I loved that burnt orange and the black.

That was a quick, easy decision.

I met Russell Pinch actually, at the House and Garden Awards

and I was chatting to him because I'd wanted some

of that mid-century sectional shelving.

And so we hatched a plan to do one together.

I wanted a bit where I could have a bar.

He suggested putting this peach mirror behind it.

It sits so well with the colors of the room.

It's really clever.

[relaxed jazz music]

When this plan started, I took this wall down

and made this one big dining room.

And basically what I wanted

was a dining room with a kitchen in it

so that I could have a lot of people for dinner.

I suppose the other challenge/thing

I really wanted for this room was for it to be a room

rather than a laboratory kitchen.

So the wallpaper was key.

And the thing I love about Antoinette Poisson

is that their colors are so sophisticated.

I did these colors with Plain English

and this one is called Burnt Toast, this very dark purple.

And then this beautiful marble

that I got from Lapicida in Harrogate.

We did this wall of cupboards with Plain English.

[paper rustling]

It's so nice having, you know, having space for everything.

And so the toaster's in here and all the pasta

and the staircase, you can see.

The windows always had those curtains.

This is a wool,

quite a heavy blanketing wool from C&C Milano.

I think I spent eight months paying for them.

They were, funnily enough, incredibly easy to work with.

I think it's a really good red. It's quite a rich red.

It's not a sort of ambulance red.

This sofa is really lovely

'cause actually it's a sofa I bought

in my first apartment in New York.

And so I upholstered it in my new,

this one of my new fabrics for Schumacher,

it's called Elizabeth Chintz.

[light jazz music]

The dining room table is one of the pieces

I designed for Oficina Inglesa.

I like this very solid top and this chamfered side

and then these very old chairs around it.

And I do like that combination.

And then this is a sort of old friend

that was given to me by William Yeoward

and it's a piece that he'd bought in Marseille.

And I love these sort of straps.

That's, of course, a brilliant piece of storage.

[light jazz music]

This is a tiny space that I built on

and this room's sort of seven foot by 10.

It's mostly calls that I have in here.

Therefore it didn't need to be a bright white space

with really good light.

And I think you do want rooms to be

somewhere you want to go,

especially if you're gonna have to work in them.

Originally in this space

I was going to use a blue seagrass on the walls.

I realized I needed to paint it.

I didn't want to do it in a flat color.

And the nice thing about it having a bit of a glaze

is that it's much stronger.

Staircases take quite a bashing.

I love this space actually,

'cause I like how it unifies the kitchen

and the sitting room.

So Margot, she did all these boards on Pinterest

of what she wanted her room to look like.

There was this one white room with this big rainbow rug.

Margot's godfather is Peter Mikic

and he did the rug for her.

And then her pink curtains

with this trim from Christopher Farr.

And then this was an old table of mine,

which was all gray, sort of chipped old paint.

And then we had that painted.

And it's sort of fun in here, I think, with all of these,

it really does feel very rainbow.

[light jazz music]

I really wanted this four poster,

which I just coveted forever.

David Hicks, Billy Baldwin, Veere Grenney,

I've always loved it.

So that was a big splurge.

So I'm so pleased with how that turned out.

And being inside that bed is very calming

and soothing and nice.

And then the really grownup thing,

which I'm so pleased with, is having a dressing table,

which does feel like a grownup/princess moment.

All that light on both sides.

And I love that mirror so that it's not that big mirror

that then blocks the entire window,

which is the sort of trouble I always find

with putting dressing tables in front of windows.

This bathroom, I can't really remember

how we came to do the alcove for the bath.

It's something I've always loved

and it feels very relaxing

and you actually taking time to have a bath

rather than rushing to get out of the house to work.

This space I adapted from a piece of furniture I bought,

which is up at North Farm, which is a table.

I've done this for Oficina Inglesa, which I love

'cause it's got these fantastic deep drawers.

This is also one of my wallpapers

and this is called Olive that I've done for Schumacher.

Bad taste sounds so much more fun

than good taste, doesn't it?

I think there's something very liberating about bad taste.

Good taste gets put into quite a safe box.

You need a bit of ugly to jar the good taste.

And I do find that when I'm doing rooms

and it's all like, Ooh, it all goes together so nicely.

And it's all feeling a bit prissy and pleased with itself.

The zebra sofa, you know, you've got to shove something in

that's just gonna be a bit rude.

But it's getting also your child's

painted rock gift in the mix.

It's part of your life, you know,

you can't just chuck everything out, I don't think.

And I definitely think that's where the magic is in rooms.

[light jazz music]