Designer Tricia Guild

INTERACTIVE GALLERY Take a colorful tour of the mansion

Guild's home: Splashy and 'clashy'

May 26, 2000
Web posted at: 2:44 p.m. EDT (1844 GMT)

LONDON (CNN) -- British designer Tricia Guild loves to experiment with color, and her four-story Victorian home is her lab.

She gutted and repainted the Notting Hill mansion with colors so vivid that no one can ignore her creation. Guild calls it proof of her "no rules" philosophy of decorating.

Guild started with the demure. She kept the home's walls and ceilings white; the floors, neutral.

Then she went for the dramatic.

"With that I wanted to zing some fresh, vibrant color," she said. "I know that sounds strange, but lime green to me is a very natural color because it's so much of the outside."

Now, lime green has so much of the inside, too. "I think it's really important when you're using color that there's a thread that goes through the whole house," she said.

The wall against the staircase is lime, but the railing is a pale, ocean-blue-green. Guild enjoys the contrast.

"I wanted those 'clashy' colors -- the bluest of the green and the yellowest of the green," she said. "In a way they clash, but I don't think they do."

Decor in flux

Two living rooms open onto each other, both canvases for Guild's signature use of bold bright colors

The old home changes constantly. Guild said she routinely switches out pieces from her collection of ceramics, as well as changing the fabrics on her furniture.

"I'm very supportive of ceramic artists,so I like to use their work and reuse it," she said. "I like to move furniture as well. I certainly like to change fabrics and experiment. I do that a lot, perhaps every season."

Sculptural "S chairs" surround the dining room table. Her guests have reservations about them at first, Guild admitted.

"I find them incredibly comfortable," she said. "People always have this horrified look when they come to dinner and think: 'Am I going to have to sit in that?' But they (chairs) are comfortable, they have wonderful movement. And they are very sensual."

A calming blue, which appears to be a pale mauve depending on the time of day, accents the bedroom. The accessories are done in white for balance and harmony, she said.

But who knows how long that color scheme will stay? Guild doesn't. "I'm always experimenting," she said.

"If I'm trying to say to (tell) people what colors to use, what textiles to use (and) how to use their space, then at least I have to experiment myself," she said.

CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch contributed to this report.

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