Designer Anna Haines' layered, elegant London home

Before becoming an interior designer, Anna Haines used to work in PR for restaurants and as a yoga teacher. It is ‘an odd coupling’, she says, but the two roles gave her an excellent understanding of people. ‘So much of what I do now is about getting under the skin of my clients and working out how far I can comfortably stretch them.’

Anna’s interest in interiors began in 2003, when she bought her first flat in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘I’d always rented before, so this gave me the freedom to experiment,’ she says. Keen to pursue her new-found vocation, she enrolled on a 10-month diploma at The Interior Design School in Queen’s Park. Jobs followed at Hackett Holland and at Caroline Riddell Interiors (both regularly included in the House & Garden Top 100 Interior Designers list). The four and a half years she spent working with Caroline were particularly formative: ‘I absorbed everything like a sponge and it was a fantastic learning experience,’ she recalls.

Anna set up on her own eight years ago and is currently full steam ahead on a Georgian townhouse in Westminster, a pair of cottages in Norfolk and a vicarage in Bath. She describes her layered, elegant aesthetic as ‘classically curated’. But there is nothing stiff: she sensitively combines colours and reupholsters antique pieces in fabrics by the likes of Susan Deliss and Guy Goodfellow. ‘There are some colours I gravitate towards, such as blues and claret, and I like to thread them throughout my projects,’ she explains. Most important to her, however, is working with a client on ‘how an interior feels, not just how it looks’.

Anna’s own home in west London, pictured here, is a good case in point. When she and her husband bought the double-fronted Victorian house nine years ago, she immediately knew how she wanted the space to flow. She knocked down a wall to unite the kitchen with a seating area, and kept a more formal sitting room on the other side of the house. Her office at the back provides plenty of storage space for fabric and samples. Upstairs, Anna made the most of a generously sized bathroom, installing a roll-top bath and adding a Thirties woven rope chair by Fritz Hansen. ‘I wanted it to feel like a proper room,’ she says. ‘My aim is always to create spaces that feel open and welcoming’.

Anna Haines is a member of The List by House & Garden, our essential directory of design professionals. See her profile here: https://thelist.houseandgarden.com/anna-haines-design-ltd

Anna Haines Design: annahaines.co.uk