Houzz TV: Step Inside a Designer’s Upbeat Eclectic Home

Watch and read how a designer created a light, airy and colourful kitchen-diner and a cocooning living room and bedroom

Mitchell Parker 26 June 2022

Houzz Editorial Staff. Home design journalist writing about cool spaces, innovative trends, breaking news, industry analysis and humor.

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Coming from a cottage with low ceilings and a closed-in feel, interior designer Jessica Spencer wanted to make the main living area in her new home one big light and airy space. She knocked down walls and relocated rooms to create an expansive kitchen-diner that has a wall of windows overlooking the garden. She decided against wall cabinets in the kitchen to amplify the open feel and added a black island to ground the space.

In the dining area, Jessica emphasised an exposed brick wall to add warmth and interest, displayed a collection of knick-knacks on industrial shelving, and surrounded the table with mismatched chairs in a range of styles and colours for an eclectic look. In the living room, blue-black walls and a green chesterfield sofa create moody drama, while dark accent walls in the bedrooms thread a cohesive look and feel throughout the home.

My Bespoke Room

House at a Glance
Who lives here? Designer Jessica Spencer of My Bespoke Room, her husband, their daughter, and three cats
Location Bournemouth, Dorset
Size Three bedrooms and one bathroom

Jessica had just moved in and had a baby when she and her husband started knocking down walls and relocating rooms. “I was a new mother, not really sure what I was doing, and there was brick dust in the air and I was freaking out constantly,” she says. “We wanted to make a big, fabulous entertainment space for our family.”

The now-open and airy kitchen and dining space enjoys sweeping views of the leafy garden. “This is probably my favourite room in the house,” Jessica says.

Watch now: Go inside this open and airy living space on Houzz TV

My Bespoke Room

In the kitchen, Jessica decided not to add any wall cabinets in order to maintain the open look and feel. “I felt it was big enough that we could get all the storage we needed with floor-level cabinetry,” she says. “So we skipped the top cabinets entirely. This is a thing people do quite a lot now, [but] six or seven years ago, this was a weird kind of approach to take… It felt like a controversial choice, but we love it.”

A substantial cooker hood frames an antique-look mirror splashback that Jessica designed and created herself. Authentic antiqued mirrors were out of her budget, so she found a piece of heatproof glass, sprayed it with mirror paint, added some brick acid and threw some dirt on it. “It gave it this antiqued mirror look and cost about £60,” she says. “It was amazing. And it was one of the best things we did in here.”

The mirror allows Jessica to see and interact with people sitting behind her at the island while she’s busy at the cooker. “When I’m cooking, I can see what my daughter’s doing behind me,” she says. “You can carry on conversations, because you still have eye contact. And it bounces light around the room.”

The perimeter cabinets are a pale sage colour. The island is a soft blue-black (Railings by Farrow & Ball), which is one of Jessica’s favourite colours to use in a home. It appears in her bedroom and the living room as well (see below). “I love it,” she says. “I put it everywhere I possibly can. The darks have to appear in every room. That’s kind of the red thread that goes throughout the house.”

A bank of windows frames more greenery outside.

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My Bespoke Room

The fridge-freezer sits slightly elevated in a wall niche. Tan bar stools coordinate with the wood flooring to add warmth.

My Bespoke Room

Opposite the kitchen, an exposed red brick wall adds a generous dose of warmth. A collection of second-hand mismatched chairs surround a well-worn wood dining table. “If you get everything from one place, it can feel as if you walked into a showroom,” Jessica says. “It needs to feel like a blend of lots of different things that reflect your personality. If you fall in love with it, find a space for it; don’t worry about it all matching.”

Two large upholstered club chairs have since been added at the ends of the table.

Watch now: See Jessica share details about how she created her eclectic home

My Bespoke Room

The brick wall also gives the home an industrial element that Jessica builds upon with various accessories and found objects to create an industrial eclectic style. “I am a maximalist, really,” she says, “so I just love a knick-knack. I love bits and pieces. And I love combining things you can find in the shops, but also like going to vintage fairs and junk shops and mixing lots of random bits and pieces that don’t theme together in any particular way. It’s chaotic, I think, for some people. It’s not for everybody. But every piece resonates and tells a story for us.”

My Bespoke Room

Jessica painted all the walls in the living room in the same blue-black as the kitchen island. “It’s a north-facing room, so there’s not a massive amount of light in here,” she says. “Rather than trying to fight that by putting light colours in and having it get kind of dingy, we’re in there in the evening anyway, so we thought, let’s just go for it. It was quite a leap of faith.”

She divided the long and narrow room into two zones. One side is a TV area with a green chesterfield sofa. Behind that is a space for lounging and reading. “Especially since we went dark, we wanted that cosiness,” Jessica says.

Watch now: See more of this home in the latest episode of Houzz TV

My Bespoke Room

The black walls also help to disguise the TV when it’s not in use.

My Bespoke Room

Jessica used the Railings colour for the headboard wall in her bedroom, too. “We wanted to do one punchy wall in here,” she says. “The rest of the room is very light – there’s no darkness happening anywhere else. But just that main framing of the bed was an important moment for us.”

She removed overhead light fixtures and installed two pendants instead. Mirrors hung behind the pendants reflect light into the room. “In a bedroom, you don’t need that much light,” Jessica says. “When you’re going into the bedroom, that’s the time when your brain is supposed to be shutting down and getting calm. Some nice, simple lighting, a simple picture, and that’s all we needed in there.”

Watch now: Step inside this designer’s colourful home

Tell us…
What do you think of Jessica’s design? Share your thoughts in the Comments.

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Joyce Butlin

Interesting one. I love the open feel and the shelves. The way she has disguised the base of the island is indeed a revelation. I was wondering how to blend off-the-shelf units with an expensive wave shaped worktop and this could just fit the bill. Not sure I would have my Dyson on the wall there spoils the view a bit. Great ideas.

Like 29 June 2022 at 9:03a.m.