Luxe Style with One Pot of Paint!

Paint is incredible stuff - it has the power to transform - to fill a space with something amazing or to hide unwanted elements. And it can be the easiest way of creating change in your spaces.

I was asked to take this apartment - a perfectly fine two bed, two bath apartment in central Leeds - and create something that felt comfortable and inviting to attract business travellers to the city. There was one big caveat - very little budget.

The bones of the place were good - white walls, wooden floors and doors and big windows throwing lots of light into the space. There was some basic furniture in the bedrooms which we couldn't change - and we had less than £5k to spend.

Paint was the answer - we redid all the white walls with a fresh coat but the real trick was to take a single tin of Farrow and Ball India Yellow and paint the window reveals. This has transformed the space - the light streaming in the windows makes the whole space glow and at night the soft golden tone just adds to the ambience.

I went with very simple, but fine linens throughout, simple cushions and throws to echo the colours with pops of burnt orange, blue and green in the chairs. A vintage leather trunk sourced at a reclamation yard made the perfect stand for the tv and I sourced some fabulous vintage-style travel posters of Leeds highlights which really give a sense of this great northern city.

This was a two week turnaround, a minimal budget and some key ideas and it's already block booked til the new year - hurrah!