An elegant living space showing perfectly how to get the mismatched furniture look right

Interior designer Guy Goodfellow has created an elegant apartment above his Chelsea premises. Arabella Youens takes a look.

Guy Goodfellow's elegant apartment.
Guy Goodfellow's elegant apartment.
(Image credit: Astrid Templier / Guy Goodfellow)

The colours in a much-loved painting of Trafalgar Square inspired the scheme for Guy Goodfellow’s living room above his showroom and design studio in Chelsea.

‘Its mix of yellow and mauve colours reminded me that I had a big panel, which I’d bought many years ago when work-ing at Colefax and Fowler,’ explains Guy. ‘The plums, mauves and vermillion in that led me to another oil I owned of a huntsman in his red coat and suddenly I had my sharp colours.’

A few architectural adjustments had already been made to the space. The fireplace was replaced with a 18th-century French design in brown Marquina marble with bespoke brass slips, sourced through Thornhill Galleries. ‘The mitred panels are given a shot of reflectivity at night by a single downlighter overhead,’ says Guy. There’s also lustre in the gilded door mouldings. The door architraves have been raised to a uniform height, lending the room an air of a piano nobile.

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As a foil to these glamorous touches, Guy lined the walls in painted hessian. Its rough texture, which absorbs pinholes, means the pictures can be moved regularly. On the floor is a Damascus flatweave rug from Robert Stephenson.

The furniture demonstrates how different styles can sit contentedly side-by-side, notably, the Lucite coffee table by Pierre Vandel and the classical shapes of the sofa and armchair.

The pair of mid-century chairs are a design by Robs John Gibbons, made by Paolo Moschino. They are covered in Guy’s own Indus Weave, a tactile fabric that has the effect of softening the tailored shape of the chairs.

Not wanting to obscure the long views affor-ded from the windows, the curtains are made of three panels of his Roussillon weave in unobtrusive shades, which adds a luxurious, but discreet touch to this beautiful space.

Guy Goodfellow — www.guygoodfellow.com


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Arabella Youens
Arabella began her career at Country Life on the website as an intern. She read Modern History at Edinburgh University and spent a year working (photocopying) for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Barcelona before moving to London where she still lives with her husband and two young daughters.