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Project Name: Cotswold Village House

Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Date Completed: December 2020

Interior Designer: Pippa Paton Design Limited

Architect: Pippa Paton Design Limited

Construction Company: Boom Construction

Photography: Ed Shepherd

The brief for Pippa Paton Design Limited was to create a modern country style family home with a light spacious feel reflecting natural colours and incorporating vintage pieces throughout. This Grade II Listed Cotswold village property, once a series of cottages, consisted of small, dark, low-ceilinged rooms on various levels, connected by long corridors required a complete renovation.

Pippa Paton Design Limited’s approach was to introduce new openings to enhance flow and simplify circulation, remove walls to reduce corridors and vault spaces to increase volume and light. The focus throughout was on exposing and enhancing historic materials such as flagstones, timber trusses and stone windows.

As in the rest of the house the aesthetic blends natural oak with a soft, neutral palette with touches of green to reflect the outside, accented with copper ironmongery, island pendants and kitchen accessories. Verdigris features in the lights over the oak dining table and decorative ceramics. The Caesarstone Cloudburst worktop reflects the external ambiance. Vintage pieces include a pale green Swedish dresser, a white-painted console separating the sitting and dining areas and an enfilade for additional crockery storage.

In the main part of the house, the softly neutral aesthetic continues with a mix of modern and vintage pieces, apart from in the bar where deep claret-coloured walls provide a more intimate feel for evening use. The main hallway now accesses a cosy family sitting room and leads up half a flight of steps through the bar, made dual aspect by the removal of a modern partition, to double doors opening to a more formal drawing room. Either side of the fireplace large traditional-style sofas upholstered in a pale wool and leather slipper chairs sit on a dark oak floor in this calm and relaxing room.

The house now feels as if was intended to be a single house rather than a series of cottages, with the new design enabling the family to enjoy all the spaces whilst still feeling connected to each other. Where rooms are intended for evening use such as the family sitting room and the bar, depth and warmth have been retained through the use of rich, deep colours, such as in the bar with its claret-coloured walls The design has also provided a significantly enhanced connection between the house and its grounds both physically, with new openings allowing easier access to external spaces, and visually, such as the picture window providing spectacular views of thoroughbred horses in the paddocks across the valley.