A passion for pattern

Fi Douglas transformed a beige-painted house into a warm and welcoming home by mixing deep and bold colours, and playful prints

- ALISON GIBB

Living room

‘I wanted to inject colour and pattern into my home, so have layered a rich palette of teals, blue and greens with pinks, corals and lemons,’ says Fi.

BUY THE KEY PIECES

Lolita table lamps with block printed cotton pleated shades, £200 each, Pooky. Pink Matiere Gris Ankara side table, £354, Made In Design

Fi Douglas and her husband Philip moved to this property from their first home, a flat in Glasgow’s West End, in 2014. ‘I was expecting Archie, our eldest,’ she says, ‘and we were looking for a house with a garden. This ticked a lot of boxes. It is located in a quiet spot in a friendly, leafy suburb near a station.

‘It had been converted from a coach house by a developer and still had the original cobbled drive. Although the décor was a beige blank canvas, we felt the house had lovely bones and we would be able to make it our own. There was quite a lot that needed fixing, however, like the drainage and roof, all the unexciting but important things, before we could move on to the fun parts, but we liked the open-plan layout and felt that the house had a nice flow to it.

‘It took us a while to get started on doing up the house. I had my second son, Ted, quite soon afterwards and two little boys and a fledgeling business was more than enough for me at the time. I set up my design studio, Bluebellgray (bluebellgray.com), in 2009, four years after I left art school. I wanted to make something that I couldn’t find on the market at the time: bright, happy cushions for homes, based on hand-painted designs. I wanted an antidote to mass production and something that would last.