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Emma Kelsall

Feature on Emma Kelsall – a Southsea-based interior designer

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“It starts with a feeling.” This month, I met with Emma Kelsall, a local interior designer who believes strongly in your home as your sanctuary; somewhere you can be yourself.

Mock up of living room interior

“I start by asking people how they want to feel in their house. How should the ambience be in a particular room? How do they want the space to work? How we feel when we’re at home is often overlooked but for me, that’s the starting point.”

This resonates strongly with me because it’s the same approach taken by Carl, who asks clients the same questions about how they want their home to feel and how it should work for them.

Emma also believes in your home reflecting your personality, and part of her service is based on helping clients achieve a beautiful home that reflects their individuality and personal style.

“It might be helping someone become a little bolder with a colour they really like but are afraid to use. Or discovering that they love luxurious fabrics or have a penchant for a particular pattern and showing them how it could be used in a room. I try and get to the essence of the person and together we make their home a place they want to be in.”

Of course, there’s more to designing a room or a space than adding some colour or choosing new curtain fabric. Emma’s talent lies not just in creativity but in helping clients visualise how their space could look. She provides sketches, mood boards, hand-drawn or 3D images and proposes layouts that make the space work.

“Some people simply can’t picture how something might look when it’s finished, and I help bring that image to life so that they can see the possibilities. It helps people make good choices, especially when the options can be overwhelming,” she says.

A design for a boutique hotel

Being overwhelmed with choice, finding it difficult to visualise layouts and understand how a room will work on a practical level, chimes with me. As someone reasonably competent at styling their own home and is certainly not colour-shy, I’ve never considered using an interior designer, but I begin to appreciate the value of someone like Emma to help me realise my vision.

How would you help someone following a home extension?

I asked her how she would go about helping someone – a fictional character obviously – design an open plan kitchen/dining/living room, following some interior remodelling work, or after a small extension has changed the whole space.

She says: “Once I’d seen the space, I would want to know what they wanted from it. Then I might offer them a full kitchen design service, including a floor plan and options on designs for practicalities and flow with the other areas. I’ll have ideas on flooring and wall coverings, how to light the room and I can suggest colour themes, fabrics and soft furnishing if required.”

Kitchen design moodboardThe idea of having professional help from someone with flair and skill is starting to sound very attractive! I wonder what Emma’s own home looks like and discover that, like me, she has a Victorian house in Southsea. She confesses that period homes are hugely appealing to her as a designer.

“They have so much character to start with so you can really play around with that and build on it. Although modern houses can also be brilliant blank canvases and I find people can struggle more when they have to start from scratch.”

Emma’s designs include a French holiday cottage which she loved working on, a boutique hotel and a colour plan for a house in Southsea. The homes of two of her recent clients currently have builders working on them, so she tells me she has to be patient before seeing her interior designs realised.

Emma specialises in residential interior design and has a first-class Honours Degree in Interior Design from De Montfort University. Find out more about Emma and her design services at emmakelsallinteriors.com

 

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