10 Steps To Visual Harmony

Hotelier Kit Kemp’s latest book reveals the themes and ideas threading through the beautiful rooms, homes and interiors she creates.

1 SLEEPING BEAUTIES

A stay in a Firmdale Hotel suite is a multi-layered experience, beginning with the Kit Kemp signature: a statement headboard, which provides a wonderful opportunity to show off unique designs on a large scale. This scheme, featuring fabrics designed by Kit for Andrew Martin design emporium, transposes positive and negative, light and dark, with ‘Wychwood’ on the walls and ‘Friendly Folk’ on the headboard. ‘Hedgerow’ cushions with yellow velvet piping rest on the bed. “There are special fabrics that crop up more than once in my interiors because they are so beautiful,” says Kemp, “and with so many spaces to design, we have the chance to live with lots of different schemes. Experimenting with fabrics like this allows me to see how they will work in a room.”

“When you leave a room, something should stay with you, making you want to return, if only to recapture that magical spell all over again,” enthuses British designer Kit Kemp, the visionary owner of a swag of hotels and executive apartments in both London and New York. “I like my interiors to capture the imagination in some shape or form... with a handwritten and distinctive style. It is always an adventure to create a new room.”

Kemp’s design flair and collaborations with artists and crafters leads to unforgettable, highly personal rooms. Her third book, Design Thread, is about weaving together spaces that are dynamic and diverse but with a thread of creative connection to create a home (or hotel) that resonates as a harmonious whole. “To find oneself surrounded by much-loved objects and the colours that make you feel cheerful must surely be one of life’s greatest luxuries,” she says. Here’s how she does it.

2 BOLD AMBITIONS