I’m a bit of a 20th century history geek and this influences my design aesthetic in a number of ways. The bright colours and shapes that appear in many of my designs reference those iconic Bauhaus exhibition posters that everyone associates with the movement and one of my favourite painters is Auguste Herbin, who is best known for his compositions of brightly-coloured geometric shapes. I also take a lot of cues, especially in terms of form and proportion from post-war architecture. It’s long been an obsession of mine and I think it was subliminally informing my sense of style for a long time before I practiced interior design professionally.

One of the most pervasive interior design-related myths out there is that we should always decorate our homes with a future buyer in mind and that it’s far easier to sell neutrally decorated homes. I believe greater value should be placed on living in the present and creating homes that make us happy, whatever that looks like for you. Otherwise, you’re basically just renting from a future owner. 

I firmly believe that living in a small space shouldn’t prevent you from making bold colour choices, it’s all down to how you use them. Colour drenching for example, can make a space appear bigger, because painting your walls, ceiling and trim the same colour has a clean and seamless appearance. I also love how stripes have the power to totally transform a space. Take my living room, the horizontal stripes elongate the room and draw the eye to the window and view beyond, whereas vertical stripes may be used to give the illusion of height in rooms with lower ceilings. Ultimately, I would just encourage people to be brave and give bold colours a go. What’s the worst that could happen? You end up having to repaint, but making mistakes is really the only way we learn!

I hate not having a dining table. I’m currently gathering ideas for the design of a foldout table that will seat up to 4 and will also function as a desk for the days when I need to work from home, but currently, whenever friends come over, we sit and eat on my sofa and I use my coffee table to serve from. This actually works quite well as the table is 2-tier, so there’s space to place drinks on the lower level while the top is filled with serving dishes, but I long for the day when I can create gorgeous tablescapes on a dining table and invite people over for food more often. I think for me, living in a small apartment, it’s always important that my furniture is adaptable and multifunctional and whatever I buy or make myself has to fulfil a number of needs.