Life & Style

Keep it calm with cool interiors

Having spent the boom years working on restaurant interiors, designer Michelle Barrett switched to homes, and then to the business she’d always wanted – selling the looks she loves

The dining room bay window has a custom-built window seat and embroidered Roman blinds. Photographs: Paul Kelly Photography

Alanna Gallagher's face
Alanna Gallagher
Sat Jul 5 2014 - 01:00

Michelle Barrett’s favourite subjects at school were chemistry and art but even then she knew she didn’t want to go to art college. Her real love was retail but it took her a while to realise that. Instead of art, she opted for the solid career choice, signing up to study analytical chemistry at DCU, a subject that by second year she utterly loathed.

But she persevered. Upon graduation

– she promised her banker father she’d finish her degree before changing career – she got her first shop job in Witchcraft Gallery, then on Cow’s Lane in Temple Bar. At night she took a basic course in interior design and on the strength of it was offered a job with a company that specialised in commercial interiors.

The cosy sitting room features a woodburning stove and a second-hand 1950s sofa. Photograph: Paul Kelly Photography

The kitchen, which is at hall-level, is a light-filled space with timber units topped with grey polished stone. Photographs: Paul Kelly Photography

This was 2004, a boom era, and she learned the ropes fast, creating restaurant interiors. Four years later the commercial work had dried up and she set up on her own, working from home. Her first break came when a previous client got in touch to ask her to revamp Buck Whaleys nightclub on Leeson Street. One project led to another, and soon she was working on houses too. Still, there was the draw of retail. What she really wanted to do was to “sell what I love myself”, soft, feminine home furnishings with a strong French accent.

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When a unit in Raheny Shopping Centre on Dublin’s northside became available, she convinced the landlord to let her have the place for a year on a low rent with an option to renegotiate if she was still in business 12 months later. He wished her luck and as a gesture of goodwill didn’t start charging her rent until the fit-out was complete. Haven Interiors is now a Dublin 5 sanctuary for the good-taste brigade, selling the style of home furnishings that she had used in her own home, a two-storey over basement Victorian house in Fairview. The house had been laid out in bedsits, so she had the task of converting it back into a family home. But even she, with years of experience behind her, found the refurbishment process “a nightmare”, as walls and ceilings crumbled to reveal a host of problems. That’s all in the past now – the house serene and calm thanks to the use of a cool colour palette that feels feminine.

She installed the kitchen at hall level, opening up the two interconnecting rooms to create a big kitchen dining room. A bay window with a built-in window seat by Custom Cabinetry and Roman blinds in an embroidered fabric add personality to the dining room, where the walls are painted Lamp Room Gray by Farrow & Ball.

The sideboard, a second-hand shop find that cost €60, has been transformed with a coat of Autentico chalk paint in a colour called Neutral. The adjacent bookcase and genteel writing desk opposite are two pieces from her furniture collection. Outside, a timber deck and set of steps take you from the kitchen down into the garden.

Somewhat indulgently, she converted the third bedroom upstairs into a big bathroom with a separate shower and a luxurious free-standing bath, sourced from Ballymena-based Bath Shack. In the corner, a plant stand, painted to tone with the colour scheme of the room, offers much-needed shelving. The sink is in a pretty oval-shaped marble topped unit from her shop.

The master bedroom is chic and understated. Silk dupion curtains in a Sanderson fabric frame the window while narrow Christian bedside lockers, painted a sage green, bookend the painted cane bed. She sourced the frilly bed linen online from Zara Home.

The sitting room is at garden level and is where she goes to chill out in the evening. An old railway sleeper above the woodburning stove forms part of a mantelpiece. She added a modern, carved beam to fill in the gap between the sleeper and the fireplace, finishing the two oaks in grey wax to give them a matching limed effect. A pair of chairs, upholstered in a Rupert the Bear style wool check by Yorkshire weavers Abraham Moon & Sons, add personality to the space, as does the dainty 1950s sofa, bought on adverts.ie for €90, which has been painted in a tonal colour and covered in smoky blue velvet.

Haven Interiors, Raheny Shopping Centre, Dublin 5, tel: 01-8315038, haveninteriors.ie