Turner Pocock is an award-winning interior design practice established in 2007 by Bunny Turner and Emma Pocock. The company has offices in London and Geneva. Turner Pocock is in House & Garden’s 100 leading interior designers and Andrew Martin’s Interior Design Review featuring the world’s top designers.
Bunny Turner combines classic and modern furnishings, with decorating schemes that embrace pattern, are clever with colour, are often bold but always very beautiful.
Bunny shares some tips on floor finishes and decorating with rugs
Obviously floor finish is a key consideration for any room and its one that comes up early on the critical path to an on time-to budget project. We will usually decide floor finish before we even make a start on the furniture layout/selection.
The type of flooring depends on the use of a room. In areas of dense traffic – ground and lower ground floors – we usually prefer to use a hard floor finish (wood, stone, tiling). But in ‘living’ rooms (and by that I mean sitting rooms/playrooms/TV rooms etc) we will generally specify a rug on a hard floor – it helps soften the feel of a space (acoustically and physically) and also helps to zone areas within a room.
In family areas we currently favour a broad plait sisal/natural material – they add a great texture to a scheme without bringing too much colour/pattern.
Alternative’s Sisal Bubbleweave
The sitting room has wooden floors, blue walls and patterned upholstery/cushions so we used a plain chunky wide plait sisal to add texture to the scheme.
However we also use rugs and carpets in a completely different way, to bring in pattern and colour to a room – you have to be careful not to make everything too busy so if the carpet/rug is patterned you need to be mindful of pattern scale/colours on items items selected for the room.
In Emma’s sitting she chose to combine a bold red geometric rug with a big leafy green print on the sofa, but kept the walls plain as a foil to her patterned scheme.
Again we have wooden floor in our bedroom but here wanted to add colour/pattern to the room so used a Madeleine Weinrub cotton flatweave in red and white zigzag….
If a room lacks pattern just add a rug!
Hallways – we are big into hallways! An often-overlooked part of the home. They form the spine of a house and should be carefully considered – introducing pattern on the walls or carpet is a great way of making a transient space like this feel more important.
Alternative Quirky Skinny on stairs
Budget depending we love using striped flatweaves or geometric patterns but if these come at too high a price its also good to bind the edge of a simpler designed carpet to introduce a flash of colour or a defining contrast.
I’ve put a striped wool loop up our stairs edged with a red herringbone border – an economical way to create a statement feature in the hallways and helps make it feel cosy.
TURNER POCOCK
Tel: 0203 463 2390
www.turnerpocock.co.uk
