I believe that rooms look best when populated with large pieces of furniture. Even small rooms. Go for the biggest sofas you can, and proper, comfortable armchairs. There’s nothing worse than a too-small armchair. Contrast is key, again, however: I also love spindly side chairs and tables. I really wanted this space to feel above all joyful and welcoming and alive, classic but a little bonkers at the same time," added Hall. Luke Edward Hall has added illustrations to the bedrooms' lampshades

It was a drab day in January 2019 when Duncan and I began hunting for a house in the country. As we trawled the web for cottages, our new lives flashed in my head as a gleeful, Arcadian slide show: garden weeding and village dog shows (we didn’t even own a dog at this point); long walks and longer lunches with friends and brilliant new neighbours. Plus, crucially, we would have an entirely new set of rooms to fill with wonderful things. But most of all, and in a very simple way, I looked forward to spending more time with hills and trees and sky around me. It would be an adventure.Unsurprisingly most of the tales are of male relationships, yearning and loss. To call the Greeks patriarchal is being kind--chauvinistic and misogynistic is more accurate. Even so, Sapphic relationships have a decent showing and there is the occasional Butch/Dyke or Gender Fluid Tale that defies category. They were perhaps most startling and remarkable of all. This is a welcome and beautifully presented effort. Among all the classical treasure sits a postmodern 1980s Memphis Milano table lamp by Ettore Sottsass. Photograph: Mark C. O’Flaherty/The Guardian Other spots to stay around the French capital include hotel Hoy, which has TV-free rooms and an in-house yoga studio so that guests can escape the chaotic hustle and bustle of Paris' streets.

This bold palette continues upstairs in the forty guest bedrooms, which have been painted sky blue, violet or olive green. At the FT Weekend Digital Festival last week, I spoke with Nathan Brooker, editor of House and Home, and put forward my own five design principles. These are the guidelines I offered, and I hope they provide a simplified foundation of what I find to be good design. 1 Try to master the art of the mix Luke Edward Hall’s Cotswolds home (and his whippet Merlin): ‘I crave the magic of contrast’ He was educated at Central Saint Martins, [3] and worked for Ben Pentreath [4] before establishing his own studio in 2015. [5] I love the idea of serious, distinguished antiques, provenance and patina, but I also love interiors with a sense of wit and nonchalance about them. I want irreverence, I want playfulness. It’s most fun when the serious and the spirited combine. One of my favourite rooms ever, the drawing room in the Paris apartment of Princess Caroline Murat Guest and Raymond Guest, was created in the 1960s by the Cuban architect and designer Emilio Terry, a hero of mine known for his take on the Baroque.Through his drawings, Luke strives to evoke a magical place, inspired in part by his personal experiences – he loves Italy, for example, the people, the food, the culture – and in part by his love for the past – an ancient past, mythological, an age of elegance where there were no computers or highways. But though it is a place of imagination, brightly colored and playful, it is never nostalgic, but rather a place where it's fun to let yourself get carried away.