Style File
Style File: winner of our 2020 Rising Star Award Olivia Outred
Style File
Interior designer Olivia Outred is the winner of our 2020 Rising Star Award, sponsored by Zoffany; here we take a look at some of her best projects
As pedigrees go, it is hard to top Olivia Outred’s professional progression. Before setting up on her own in 2014, she took a degree in interior and spatial design at Chelsea College of Arts, worked under Philip Hooper at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler and headed up the interior-design side of Lulu Lytle’s Soane. Olivia brings a fresh, imaginative and modern eye to classic English decorating – be it the chicest of offices or colourful homes. All the essential ingredients are there for creating smart, interesting and inviting spaces – good art and antiques, and a sophisticated layering of fabrics and patterns. She is particularly skilled at injecting unexpected elements, such as jolts of colour, and a joyfulness that can knock the sense of stuffiness out of an interior. This is a designer who is going places and we look forward to seeing what she does next.
A colourful, comfortable London flat
The combined creative talents of designers Olivia Outred and Lulu Lytle have transformed a dark London flat into a bright and colourful home with characterful country-house elements. The Persian Ziegler Mahal rug is from Gallery Yacou. A vintage Indian fabric was used to upholster a Robert Kime ottoman. Soane’s brass ‘Shark’s Tooth Mirror’ was made bespoke in an extra-large size.
A colourful, comfortable London flat
In the kitchens, the walls are painted in ‘Jonquil’ by Edward Bulmer Natural Paint. A reed and leather woven Tuareg mat from Morocco adds geometric pattern. The fabric gathered inside the cabinet doors is ‘Green Antelope’ cotton by Brigitte Singh from Aleta. Soane’s ‘Gallery Chairs’, brought from the owner’s previous house, were given new loose covers in white linen. A gilt-framed ‘Circular Hand Beaten Mirror’, also from Soane, fills the space above the turquoise-tiled chimneypiece.
A colourful, comfortable London flat
In the main bedroom, Farrow & Ball’s ‘Drag’ wallpaper in colourway 1252 is similar in hue to Claremont’s ‘Antique Serge’ linen, which was used to upholster the banquette by the window. It also picks up on the muted green tones of ‘Dandelion Clock (Faded)’, a patterned linen fabric from Robert Kime, used for the curtains and headboard. The flat’s owner bought the blue-painted antique chest of drawers from Brownrigg in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. The blue glass lamp base is one of a pair from the London-based dealer Christopher Butterworth.
source: house
