FROM CORPORATE LIFE TO CREATIVE FLAIR
I’ve always been a true home bird and I’m never happier than when I have a weekend stretching out in front of me with no plans other than to enjoy the time of my family in our lovely home.
I have had a life-long love of creating beautiful sanctuaries from where we live. For almost 20 years I had a career in the corporate world which saw me working in demanding jobs with long hours away from home. This was all worth it to be able to return back to the haven I’d created – every time I would open the door, I would feel a little lift of joy to be held safely by those 4 walls which brought so much happiness to me. I would feel my shoulders drop.
Having our first child, Rufus, made me realise that being out of the house for more hours than I was in it and barely seeing my little boy during the week meant that the way I was working didn’t feel worth it after all. I adored the home we’d created in SW London and sobbed deeply when we sold it but we decided to leave our wonderful city to reduce our overheads. We made our way to the wild and beautiful Jurassic Coast in West Dorset.
We put our house on the market and as the estate agent came round to visit, he asked if I was setting up an interior design business. I hadn’t planned to but now you mention it….! It sold the first day to the first people who saw it. I still dream about how that house made me feel. It was a small Victorian terrace, of which, of course, there are many but it was simply magic in the feelings it evoked in me. I think I will always miss it a little.
Just before leaving London, we suffered our first miscarriage. And had our second a few months after moving to Dorset. At the time I was reading anything and everything I could to have another baby. I came across Emma Cannon’s Fertile which covered the importance of having a fertile life in general – one of abundance, reward and joy. Her Dad had once said to Emma that her role in life was to find her unique gift and bring it to the world. This stuck with me – reimagining interior spaces and transforming them in to something beautiful felt like mine.
I realised that the thing I could lose hours over and never grow bored of was interior design. I wanted to give to others the gift of creating something so special from their home, something just for them, something that would bring more meaning to the everyday and hold them through all of life’s ups and downs. A way to help people connect with their homes on the deepest level and invoke feelings of well-being and harmony from the moment they step back through the door.
I had our second son, Gabriel, in the summer of 2020 (yay!) and set about mobilising my dream to design interior spaces for others. Whilst I subscribe to the view that if you’ve got an eye for good interior design, you’ve got an eye….I also wanted to credentialise my natural ability so I trained with the Inchbald Institute and registered Salt Haven Ltd in May 2021. I create relaxed and beautiful sanctuaries for my clients, spaces that are a joy to live in. I adore natural materials and design with timelessness and longevity in mind, always.
My measure of success is to create spaces that you’ll never want to leave!
