I've used feel-good shades for a happy home'

Interior designer Holly Scott brought this plain new build to life with a carefully curated colour palette, statement artwork and gold accessories for an elegant look

- Stephanie Smith

Making the move from London to the countryside had been on Holly Scott’s mind after her first daughter Amelia was born. ‘We had a one-bedroom garden flat in Clapham, which was fine for the two of us, but London wasn’t somewhere we wanted to bring up children,’ she says. ‘I grew up in the countryside around Henley and I was keen to give that experience to my children.’

The couple still needed to be able to get into London for work, so started looking along the M4 corridor and landed on the village of Benson in Oxfordshire. ‘It had everything a village should have, including a good school, and it ticked a lot of boxes.’

The couple purchased an end-of-terrace, four-bedroom house which had been extended, and spent the next seven years there, doing it up to their liking, and welcomed another daughter, Imogen. ‘We had good neighbours with an identical house at the other end of the row, who suddenly announced they were moving three years ago. I realised I had itchy feet too.’

NEW BEGINNINGS

A new development of homes on one side of the village piqued Holly’s curiosity. ‘I hadn’t even been thinking about a new build,’ she says. ‘As there was nothing more we could do to our house, I thought we’d move onto another larger older property and renovate.’

But as soon as the couple saw what was on offer, they were hooked. ‘This house was on a lovely plot overlooking fields and it just felt so open. It was detached with big kerb appeal; plenty of off-street parking; large, light rooms; and a quality finish.

All the bedrooms were doubles and there was a main bathroom, plus two en-suites. We more or less made up our minds on the spot.’ Another bonus was not having to get involved in a drawn-out sale of their former property. ‘The company will buy your old house in part-exchange, so that was a whole lot of hassle we avoided,’ she says.

MOOD-BOOSTING HUES