Interior Design Blog

Interior design practice Susan Llewellyn Associates has devised a Saturday workshop that describes how an interior designer works, reveals where they find their inspiration and explains how they conceive their schemes. There is then a practical session, where participants devise their own schemes with help from the firm's founder, Susan Llewellyn, and her senior designer, Jennifer Smith.

I attended the most recent workshop along with participants ranging from a property developer (who had only previously worked on large houses and wanted some tips on creating a scheme for a Marylebone flat) to an office manager, who wanted to embellish her rented one-bed flat without repainting it.

Llewellyn described the interior design process, from the first client meeting to the finishing touches. She also talked about sources of inspiration, explaining her admiration for Eileen Gray, revealing how Siena Cathedral prompted a carpet design and urging us to look to artists such as Matisse for colour combinations.

After lunch, the afternoon was devoted to the practical workshop, where the participants devised schemes on mood boards. Each participant had arrived with a project in mind. I recently moved from a Shoreditch flat to a 200-year-old cottage in rural Berkshire and needed advice on turning an open-plan area into a living and dining room. Smith advised me on how the layout should flow while Llewellyn encouraged me out of my comfort zone of brown, beige and cream, opening my eyes to the possibilities of a glamorous scheme based on shades of grey with accents of purple, orange and red. Their advice proved invaluable and enabled everyone to end the day with a personalised scheme they could take home and use to turn their design dreams into reality.
 
www.susanllewellynassociates.com