kitchens to covet bright ideas

Hollie Newton’s airy, light-filled Dorset kitchen brings the outdoors in, combining whitewashed Scandi simplicity with pops of colour for added warmth and character

- Hollie Newton

unwind

Feel at home in a spacious, calming, lightfilled kitchen, catch up with Rosie Birkett’s latest home projects, and lose yourself in the deliberately patient approach to making perfect eggs benedict

I’m a screenwriter, creative director, gardener and cook. I wrote a bestselling gardening book a few years back, How to Grow: A Guide for Gardeners Who Can’t Garden Yet (£20, Orion Spring). I live down by the sea in Poole, Dorset, with my husband Tim, toddler Bertie and our doodle, Lettuce. This is our home – a dilapidated 1920s bungalow that we bought four years ago, completely renovating it from top to bottom.

We have a light, bright, L-shaped kitchen/living room – about 40 square metres – with an enormous peaked floor-to-ceiling window extension that makes it look far bigger than it is. The entire back wall is glass, so even on the dreariest of days it’s impossible for the kitchen to feel gloomy or cramped. Though white is the base, I’m a magpie when it comes to colour and have pops all over the place; they’re particularly concentrated in the snug living room corner.

We moved here from a basement flat in London that had a windowless galley kitchen where you had to crab-walk past each other to the cupboard. Light and space were consequently the biggest design factors with our new kitchen. Those, and an open-plan cooking/dining/living space. No more shouting to guests from the next room!