Suzy Hoodless designs interiors for high-profile clients and all her projects bear her style mantra: know what you like and don't be afraid to try something new, writes Zita Spring
SUZY HOODLESS IS a British interior designer and international tastemaker whose fresh, emotive approach to creating living spaces sets her apart from many of today's professional interior designers. High-profile design projects she has carried out include a hunting lodge in Scotland, a beach house in Barbados, the London townhouse of supermodel Erin O'Connor, and a private members' club in Covent Garden. Suzy's current projects include a 10,000 sq ft family home in London's Notting Hill and a series of 90 eateries worldwide for an Italian restaurant chain, while earlier this year wallpaper company Osborne & Little launched a range of Suzy Hoodless-designed wallpapers.
With each of her interior design projects, Hoodless succeeds in creating warm spaces full of heart and personality, where modern design elements sit effortlessly alongside classics. She creates the sort of interiors many of us would love to achieve in our own homes, but somehow we come unstuck. When decorating a home, there's nothing as frustrating as wanting to create a space that is uniquely you but not knowing how to translate your tastes and personality into an interior. It's one of our most common design dilemmas and it's tough to know where to turn for advice.
Well, there may be no one better equipped to help unlock the secrets of creating a vibrant home packed with personality than Hoodless herself. On a sunny Dublin afternoon, I pull up an antique armchair next to Suzy Hoodless and pick her brains.
Hoodless strongly believes that a home's interior design is about more than just aesthetics - our emotional connection with our homes is paramount.
"Our surroundings influence our outlook and mood hugely; it's enormous." Hoodless says. "I think it's absolutely essential that you live in a space that inspires you, and which makes you feel like you're going home to a sanctuary and an escape from the outside world, and is an extension of your personality."
But how do you figure out what features, furniture and colours will make your home your own personal sanctuary? Hoodless' most ardent advice is research, research, research. It is a word she uses often while we chat about interiors. "I think it's really important that people put a scrapbook of ideas together. When people come to me or talk to me about their homes, they just think that they can go out on Saturday and buy furniture. It doesn't work like that. The more planning and the more research you do, the better it's going to be, the stronger the outcome. It's really the background legwork that is the make or break. Keeping a scrapbook of ideas and inspiration over time is a great way of tracking the things that appeal to you. You'll notice similar design elements, furniture styles and colour palettes emerging in your scrapbook, which can help to avoid regrettable impulse purchases or falling for design fads.
Familiarising yourself with what's available and what you like will build your confidence, and Hoodless maintains that "people need to be confident, need to be bold, need to do their research and see what's out there, see how people mix things and just give things a go. I think the greatest mistake is to not to give things a go. It's much better to give it a go and make a mistake than not to try something different at all."
Of course, what can be off-putting about trying something different or out of the ordinary in our homes is the worry that down the line it will look dated or no longer appeal to us. Hoodless' advice for being bold while maintaining a timeless look is to mix and match old and new. "I like to design spaces that are classic, so I like to buy contemporary pieces and I like to buy antiques and I think that when you do that, it creates a classic interior which hopefully won't date. Something classic won't date in a year, it won't date in five years. It's like anything, whether it's your wardrobe or your car or whatever it might be; things need maintenance and taste evolves, which I think is a good thing."
So when decorating, don't think playing it safe is the route to preventing a room from dating. Go ahead and team Granny's hand-me-down dining suite with a Foscarini light fitting overhead, but leave room to add and subtract accessories over time as your taste naturally evolves. Hoodless adds: "I think it would be odd to create an interior that didn't need anything more added to it over a long time." When it comes to mixing modern pieces and antiques, Hoodless advises: "You can't mix just anything. I think that it's all to do with your eye and instinct. I think things have to complement each other and I think you have to have a gut instinct of how that works. I like mixing the two because they then both take on a new look and create something totally different."
As well as modern and antique furniture combinations, another strong suit of Hoodless' is her confident use of colour. Is that also something instinctive, or how does she recommend choosing the right colours for an interior? It's that old chestnut, research, again. "I think if you do research, if you look in magazines or books and see an interior that you really like that's got a great colour, then just give it a go and put it on the wall, do big samples and take a look at it. I think you just have to go through that process; that's how I do it." Researching interiors in books and magazines isn't the only way to find the right colour for your home, though. "I don't think of a colour by sitting there staring into space or flipping through a paint chart, I get my inspiration elsewhere," Hoodless continues. "It might be on a walk, seeing colours on the ground, it might be anything." She gestures to the leafy courtyard outside the hotel drawing room, pauses, and offers one last piece of advice: "I think you just need to open your eyes to inspiration."
See Zita Spring's blog at www.homebug.net