An Artful Life

Kate's guidance and advice on the flow of the house, room use and design was invaluable. We were working with another architect for the structural designs of the house, but felt we needed Kate's experience to really make the house work for us. We sent Kate our architect's drawings and she was able to pick up on points that we felt had been missed. This led to the kitchen layout being completely refigured as a space for a dining table had been overlooked. Kate also gave us an 'aha' moment with the suggestion of moving the washing machine and tumble drier upstairs into a cupboard in the family bathroom. This has been a game changer and something I show all new visitors to the house! This frees up space in the utility room, so it now works excellently as a boot room, and it means all the clothes and laundry items are kept upstairs - which is a logical location if you think about where you dress and undress! So no more traipsing up and down stairs to put loads of washing on. Kate was also open to ideas and pushed us to really think about how we were going to use the house. She has excellent advice and ideas and is lovely to work with. I would highly recommend An Artful Life!

I can't rate Kate highly enough. She is very professional, very sensitive and flexible. The project was the renovation of a dull 1980s house which needed completely updating and refurbishing. I chose Kate because I liked the projects she’d done. She worked with us to design the overall interior scheme for every room (and a great deal of the outside) having taken a very sketchy and possibly vague brief in order to produce mood boards for each room. She made loads of suggestions for the furniture, lighting, ornaments, rugs etc in order to give ideas and choices for how the rooms might look, helping us to decide what we liked and wanted. In our case, we had various pieces of family furniture we wished to incorporate and she worked around/with these too. There is a bewildering array of choice in every aspect of interior decoration and design, bathrooms are especially confusing, and Kate was invaluable in guiding us through the many options. She sourced and ordered most of the items thus saving a huge amount of time and effort. She put together drawings to show the layout of each room from bedrooms, to bathrooms, and what they would look like so we were able to make decisions on which decorative scheme to choose and which items to include . She designed a staircase and entrance hall plus joinery for the dining room and living room. She worked with the architect, with the horrendous builder (who we had to sack in the end) and other suppliers and tradespeople, always remaining positive, helpful and encouraging. I'm not sure how to sum myself up as a client, but possibly, opinionated and indecisive, among other traits, but I trusted Kate completely to guide me to the right decisions along the way with tact and wisdom. She is very well organised, always very responsive. Her documentation is impeccable - wonderful project plans, keeping tabs on what needs to happen, what's been bought (essential when there is a multitude of items for a whole house) and by when. The main thing is she is wonderfully easy to work with and I couldn't have found a better interior designer. Do I recommend her? Definitely!

Very good design, really easy to work with. Spent time with us working through details to make the custom storage projects really look good and work practically for the clients Would recommend Kate whole heartedly and have!

We have been working with Kate on design and furnishing for a large open plan living dining space, with an adjoining snug and mezzanine area. It has been a pleasure. She has been a true partner in the process, working closely with us - guiding and also challenging us with new ideas where needed. She has really listened to our needs and how we live day to day, quickly suggesting designs and moving at pace but not pressuring us. She has been very effective at sourcing pieces, including adapting based on our initial feedback. Her patience, flexibility and gentle guidance as we make decisions has given us confidence in the choices we are making for our home. Kate has also done a great job identifying tradespeople to complete the joiner, building and decorating works we will need to finish the design. Would highly recommend working with Kate!

When we wanted to reinvent our attic work space we reached out to An Artful Life. Working with Kate was a brilliant experience. She came up with an overall creative vision for the space together with excellent ideas for all the details. Her input and vision has really transformed the space! We’ve since asked for her input on other areas of the house. It was a really good experience working with Kate and I look forward to working with her again

Kate has been really great to work with and we would highly recommend her. We are doing a small redecoration project and she was really helpful in tailoring a package to exactly what we needed. Her inputs were super helpful and we are really looking forward to enjoying the space when the project is finished!

We used Kate to put forward interior layout/design concepts for our house renovation - she was really easy to work with and has delivered the work very quickly. She is great at listening to what you want and can think outside the box! We wouldn't hesitate to recommend her to anyone else.

I was really impressed with the designs Kate came up with for our utility room and office. She understood what we were individually looking for and has come up with some innovative solutions that meet both our needs!

We used An Artful Life to design our interior layout for our new build. From our initial site meeting, Kate was very professional and totally understood what we were trying to achieve. She was very easy to work with and her attention to detail is phenomenal, the work was submitted on time and to a great standard. The final design drawings were so good, I cried. Not only did she manage to give us exactly what we wanted, she also managed to give us amazing functional design we didn't know we needed! We couldn't recommend An Artful Life enough.

We had been looking for a new house for many years, then decided our best option was to stay in the old house we loved, extend it, and renovate it to make it feel even more special. We asked Kate to guide through the process and help us to realize our vision. We are extremely happy of how things turned out. Communication with Kate was excellent and timely. When problems with suppliers or builders occurred, she was quick to identify possible solutions. She created very nice visuals which made us feel confident in our decisions. It was a truly positive experience. I would strongly recommend her professional and friendly advice.

With the help of Kate we turned a selection of our thoughts and ideas into a beautiful reality. Kate helped plan the shape and layout of our extension, drawing and creating numerous visuals for options to ensure we would maximise the usage of space whilst ensuring it beautifully and seamlessly linked to the existing space. We thought we had strong ideas of what we wanted, but it turned out they weren't so clear. Through the design process Kate really helped turn this collection of thoughts into an amazing and cohesive design. As we liked what we saw so much, we extended the scope of work further and Kate provided lovely design drawings with furniture and fittings options for several other rooms in the house, including dining room, guest bedroom, en-suite and most excitingly of all our new born daughter's nursery. It's my new favourite room in the house!

Kate provided an extremely supportive service, listening to our requirements and preferences, asking about important considerations we hadn’t thought about ourselves and coming up with proposals that were exciting, effective and original.