Beata Heuman: Every Room Should Sing

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From how to maximise small spaces to finding inspiration, learning what you like and knowing how to translate your own unique individuality, plus why it's important to value the sentimental, it's an invaluable tome for any budding interior decorator. I love the way she talks about what makes a room personal, what makes it yours; where she finds inspiration and what is behind the choices she has made when working on her client's homes. Her voice is friendly, intelligent and she encourages you not to take things too seriously - it's no fun!

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? So, what is home? The answer could be a simple list of what you need: a place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to wash, a place to store things, a place to read, a place to sit with friends. All of this is true. What is also true is that the main spaces we occupy shape us, more than we might realize, and all too often there is a dislocation between people’s home design and their personalities. As with our projects, most of the pieces and detailing in the house are bespoke, from the Art Deco glass ceiling in the kitchen, inspired by the grand cafés of Scandinavia, to the daybed we designed that’s upholstered in Joseph Frank fabric and the dodo egg lights in the kitchen.In her 2021 book, Every Room Should Sing, Beata made a passionate call for more individual interiors. “Your surroundings affect you consciously and unconsciously, and we should all aspire to construct a home environment that helps us to be the person we want to be. An interior can enrich your life, and can even open your mind to certain ideas. You need to seek the right combination of whatever matters to you.” Then, if I try to analyze her design style, it's really just: take a bunch of things that don't match, throw them in a room together, add a few things for scale and balance, make sure something has a scalloped edge, and the room is done. So is it genius to do this? It makes for comfortable rooms that reflect the owners, or is this something we've all just been doing all along and somehow Heuman put a new spin on it and made it trendy? rounded up because I'm painfully conflicted. ;-) Is Beata Heuman a genius? Every room screamed Beata Heuman, yet some I absolutely loved (and could move right into and never redecorate ever again) and some I loathed. How is that even possible? I'm assuming that's because these rooms really reflected the personalities of the owners more than it seems at first glance. The rooms I loved were probably the ones of the owners who has similar tastes to mine.

Create spaces that help us live comfortably in a way that is possible for us to maintain. Is our home loved and used to its full potential? Beata's challenge was then to furnish the three-storey, five-bedroom house from scratch, keeping it true to the personalities of the owners. 'We didn't want it to be obvious they had used an interior designer, so I created a layered look that appears to have been built over time.' The owners' large and varied collection of art added an important visual texture to the decoration. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

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A drawing of the house I grew up in, by myself aged ten, complete with my brother’s moped leaning against the gable. It is not the easiest point to illustrate, but the same idea lies behind religious buildings. Places of worship are designed to inspire their congregations and help them access a range of emotions through architecture and iconography. Your surroundings affect you consciously and unconsciously, and we should all aspire to construct a home environment that helps us to be the person we want to be. An interior can enrich your life, and can even open your mind to certain ideas. You need to seek the right combination of whatever matters to you.

When we design a house we think very carefully about how our clients will move around the space. We spend a lot of time making sure that all aspects are considered so that in the end you have a very liveable home. This means coming up with new solutions which essentially simplify your day to day life, which to me is the key thing about modern living.”Noble Barn reminds of where I grew up in Sweden – in fact, it looks a little like a slightly dilapidated building on my parents’ farm that I currently have my eye on. One day I hope it will be our dreamy holiday house.”

The interior designer gathers dahlias in front of her mother’s greenhouse, one artistically spattered with chalk to protect the vines from harsh sunlight Now, she has released a coffee table tome, one as good looking as the homes she designs, named for her mantra: Every Room Should Sing. In it, she gives the lowdown on how to give your home the Heuman treatment, transforming it with playful details, bright colours and bespoke furnishings, telling the story through photographs of some of her most ambitious projects. And do the rooms really reflect the owners? In a sense, they definitely do. In another sense, they scream Heuman so much that I personally wouldn't hire her because I would want my rooms to scream "me." Almost everyone believes that there is something deep and mysterious about [interior decoration] or that you have to know all sorts of complicated details about periods before you can lift a finger. Well, you don’t…decorating is just sheer fun: a delight in color, an awareness of balance, a feeling for lighting, a sense of style, a zest for life, and an amused enjoyment of the smart accessories of the moment.” (Dorothy Draper) (p. 236).A strictly uniform approach might look awful or it might look great, but in both instances it is without the mark of individual personality. If a space does not allow you to be your complete self, how can you be happy there? We are all different and contradictory in nature - serious and silly at once. I think we need this complexity reflected in the things around us to feel stimulated and at ease. We are more than just one thing.The home should be a true reflection of who you are and where you are, but you also want to make sure your surroundings are the best versions of themselves, to serve your intentions for the kind of life you want to lead. Obviously, if you hire an interior designer, the truth is that we do everything in one go. But it’s important to me for our projects not to look too ‘done’. It should look like it’s evolved over time, which will allow it to continue to evolve. Even with our big residential projects in London, space is always at a premium, so we have to think a lot about where to put everything, and how our clients can keep it clean and tidy. That’s another important consideration if you go for this, well, I don’t really like the word ‘maximalist’ but, if you go for it, it’s really important that it’s not cluttered.