At Home with... Rebecca Lovatt

I am quite passionate about timeless interiors- reusing old pieces, buying antique and vintage furniture and mixing it with a few modern accessories to create a harmonious, relaxed and happy home.

Where do you live?

I live in a 17th Century thatched cottage in tiny hamlet (it’s just one lane) on the borders of Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. The cottage was originally a farmhouse so we are lucky enough to be surrounded by arable fields and a variety of animals from horses, cows, sheep and chickens to deer, badgers and pheasants. We are surrounded by nature which inextricably links us wonderfully to the seasons.

Did it need much work or renovation?

The cottage had been empty for a year and a half so it needed quite a bit of attention. We were greeted by a world of webs and spiders and the most enormous dead rat in the hall!

The kitchen had been completely stripped except for a cheap nasty sink unit and a curmudgeonly Aga. We kept the Aga but replaced the sink unit with a Belfast sink and fitted an oak worktop with curtains to hide the white goods and used freestanding dressers for storage as well as making cupboards either side of the Aga for storage.

Many of the rooms had been painted in beautiful dark colours but after a while I realised that winter in an old dark cottage with an overhanging thatched roof was long and rather depressing so I used a variety of Farrow and Ball off whites to lighten each room and re-injected the colour with soft furnishings and accessories.

After a few years we converted an old stable block into a couple of extra bedrooms and a bathroom for family to stay in when they visited.

Where do you find inspiration for your home?

I constantly refer to the Ros Byam Shaw series on English design and snuffle out interiors books whenever I can. I have an enormous collection of magazines which are a constant source of inspiration for me. 

My Instagram journey has provided so many incredible opportunities but when I see an article that I have written or spot a feature that I helped to style in a magazine, I still get the most enormous jolt of joy.

What have been your influences in shaping your own personal décor style?

I love the quintessential English style of Colefax and Fowler, the blowsy romance of Cabbages and Roses, the sublime beauty of Kate Forman fabrics, vintage Laura Ashley florals and Rachel Ashwell’s eclectically beautiful Shabby chic style,

I think pieces that have provenance, that contain a story or a link to friends and family are what create a home. They give a house soul and fill it with happiness.

What is your most recent furniture/home accessory purchase?

I recently bought a glorious vintage bedding set in a delicious yellow stripe with vintage florals woven through the pattern. I am a sucker for soft furnishings, it is such a simple way of adding colour and changing the feel of a room (yes I will hold my floral loving hands up to summer and winter cushions!).

When you look for an accessory or a piece of furniture, do you find the piece to suit the room or do you find the furniture and create a room aesthetic around it?

It entirely depends upon what I am doing. With our cottage I worked from the rooms and the history of the cottage and blended our furniture from our old home with this. When designing a brand new space I try to take into account the history of the space as well as the surroundings and then look for appropriate pieces - (we converted an old stable block so I kept the furnishings simple with a brick floor and weatherboarded walls and an iron bed).

When working on interiors projects, the client will often have a piece in mind which I then work from. A recent client had bought a glorious floral painting, so we took the colours from this as our starting point for her sitting room, but then she asked me to design another space that would be her work/ retreat room and having worked with her for a while I knew that her retreat room could start with a Gustavian bureau then I worked out from there, picking out the antique blue and grey paintwork in other pieces and creating wooden panelled walls in a similar style.

I then began a website with articles on interior design and how I had decorated our home, then more magazines got in touch and featured our cottage. People began to ask me for help with their interiors and when Naomi Jones and Rob Sanderson came to photograph our home for a Christmas shoot for The English Home magazine we struck up a wonderful friendship and they asked me to join them on house shoots which was a total dream come true!

I adore working on magazine shoots and I also love writing my own articles for Preloved magazine. I have always enjoyed writing so to be asked to become a columnist on such a beautifully curated magazine was another dream come true.

I am so fortunate that my home is also in a bizarre way my work, it does mean I might weep occasionally when the dog has destroyed a floral arrangement and eaten my carefully curated scone and drunk the accompanying cup of tea but to make a living from creating lovely things in my home is beyond any of my wildest dreams.

For you, what is home?

A retreat. Somewhere your feel safe and loved. When my mother in law first saw our cottage she exclaimed over the enormous thatched roof:  “it feels like the cottage is giving you a huge hug”, it still feels like this ten years on and I still can’t believe our luck every time I pull into the drive.

I have been incredibly lucky and met so many extraordinary and talented people all because of one very old crumbly cottage which I love very much.