The Well-Travelled Home

Emma clanfield has created an exotic interior with rich colours and exuberant patterns inspired by her time living abroad.

- Alison Gibb

When house hunting in Aberdeenshire back in 2001, Emma Clanfield looked at just two properties, but that was enough. ‘I saw the view from this house and I bought it,’ she says. Steve, her husband, was abroad at the time and didn’t see their new home until the day they moved in.

‘Moving day was a difficult day to say the least,’ says Emma. ‘It was snowing so much that the removal vans and the oil delivery truck could not get up the hill, so the previous owners could not move out and, by the time we moved in, the oil central heating was off. Thankfully, the winters have been milder since.’

Emma and Steve were living in the Middle East at the time, but wanted to buy in the area to have a base in the UK near to family. ‘My parents are down the road and my brother and his family live next door to them,’ says Emma. So they bought the house, using it for a few summers just as a base when they visited friends and family, before renting it out for eight years.

Emma and Steve enjoyed living abroad, but decided to move back to the UK permanently when their daughter Isabel was eight so she could enjoy the benefits of having extended family nearby.