Go big or go home

Designer Anna Hayman has made her Ringmer home her canvas

- Nione Meakin

There is not a single white wall in designer Anna Hayman’s Ringmer home. Every flat surface is splashed with colour, from the inky dining room to the striking black kitchen.

“White is a strange noncolour to me,” she explains, as we drink coffee on burnt orange velvet sofas. “I feel like it blocks emotion – and I’m a very emotional person.” Even the ceilings have been painted to match the walls. “When I see a bold colour on a wall but a white ceiling it feels to me like someone just hasn’t committed to the colour.” A lack of commitment is not a charge one could level against Hayman, a petite, confident blonde in towering snakeskin platform boots. But it helps, she explains that she has found the house she wants to live in until she is old. “When you’re not worried about resale value, you don’t worry about painting the door frames gold.”

Hayman moved into the 1920s property in 2017, with psychotherapist husband Henry, their two boys Harrison, 10, and Spencer, 7, and Myrtle the dachshund. “Everything was woodchipped – including the ceilings – but that was the only issue. We didn’t have to make any structural changes.” She was in the process of setting up her design company when they moved. “I thought, great, I can make this place my canvas. And that’s what I did for a while. But it’s a lot of upheaval for the people you live with if you’re always changing their living space.” Today, as demand for Hayman’s work continues to grow – her designs are stocked everywhere from Liberty to New York’s Bergdorf Goodman – she has relocated her work to studios in nearby Easons Green that she shares with a swordsmith and a carpenter. But the house remains a showcase of her talents as a designer.