Decorating lessons by Alidad

Browsing the website of the great interior designer Alidad is not only a feast for the eyes but also a fascinating read. Every picture includes a description where he talks about the details, ideas and the reason why he chooses certain elements on his projects. Below are some of my favourite tips from this interior design maestro.

‘In order to design a room that felt restored rather than created from new, there are many historical references including that of the traditional Portuguese tiles, Oriental painting, ’40’s style chandelier, Louis XV chairs and nineteenth-century repousse brass lamps’

‘I chose these newly made traditional Portuguese tiles for their perfect tones of aged blue, white and pink, as well as the fresh and lively effect they have on the rest of the scheme’

‘I use textiles and pattern in a rich and harmonious mix that draws you in and ultimately gives a room its comfortable appeal. However, if you look closely there are the Alidad plains that create that harmony. I have used a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, a late nineteenth-century Suzani as a tablecloth, a red cut-velvet nineteenth-century Italian cushion with another cushion on the green velvet chair that is made from an eighteenth-century needlework’

‘Here you can see how the hand-painted portrait of a Sultan has been surmounted by a blue verre eglomise frame that is surrounded by a hand-painted paper that is then edged with a painted and gilded moulding. The nineteenth-century samovar echoes the shape of the Sultan’s framing, and I like the lamps for their scale and simplicity’

‘Using the right combination of scale, texture and colour is an art critical to creating the layer and levels of comfort so the room appeals to all the senses. Every detail and aspect of the design shown here are originals, from the embroidered headboards to the covers and cushions’

‘Building up and ultimately creating the right levels of texture in a room relies on many different techniques that work together. I create rooms where your eye sees and can almost feel the comfort before you touch’

‘The pullout shoe unit contains a double-rack system in order to store two layers of shoes – I was not prepared to waste even one inch of space as above all, a lady’s dressing room must function according to very specific needs and uses. Numbers of shoes, dresses, coats, gowns, trousers and shirts were all recorded so the dressing room closets accommodated everything precisely to ensure there was the right kind, size and amount of storage’

‘This Library displays a true sense of my own taste and the way I see a space. It encompasses everything that is Alidad for it has comfort, warmth, age, essence and history, and ultimately a kind of interiors sex appeal’

‘This ladies private study was long and narrow, so the idea was not to encroach into the room with a huge desk, but rather have a pull-out desktop from the bookcase cabinet. The hand-painted wallpaper brings in an element of the garden, but it also makes the room feel larger than it is’

‘You can be more wildly adventurous in the design of certain areas of the home, such as hallways or cloakrooms because you pass through the spaces rather than live within them. In this cloakroom of striped marble and gold mosaic, I wanted the client to be transported into a different era’

‘I like to use screens in my rooms as a way of creating drama, often to hang things on. In this London sitting room, the height of the screen adds height to the room’