How one hour with interior consultant Patrick O’Donnell transformed the tricky kitchen-dining room in our rental cottage

If you’re in a rental, the idea of investing in the design of a room can seem frivolous and, well, a bit pointless. But life is short and good interiors can be life-changing, and so with that mantra I decided it was finally time to tackle the kitchen-dining room in our cottage in Sussex. Interiors consultancy services are perfect for this kind of project: they allow you to approach a house piecemeal and are much more appropriate for a rental. Patrick O’Donnell, Farrow & Ball’s charismatic International Brand Ambassador and a man of many talents, is one of a handful of decorators and designers to have recently launched his own consultancy service. Unsurprisingly, he’s a dab hand when it comes to colour, but he’s also got a great eye and I was attracted by his practical attitude, which is made abundantly clear through his own house where he’s made little tweaks to create a space that feels layered and lovely. ‘Everyone deserves to live in the nicest space available and it doesn’t need to cost a fortune,’ explains Patrick. ‘Through consultancy, I hope to demystify and democratise interior design.’ With promises like that, I could barely contain my excitement before our one hour virtual consultation over Zoom.

The problem: how to give soul to a dark kitchen-dining room that and doubles as a playroom for my two year old

I like to think that having spent 10 years working at House & Garden, I should be able to pull a room together, but I admit to being flummoxed by the kitchen-dining room in our Victorian cottage in Sussex. Since we moved in two and a half years ago, the space has presented as something of a challenge. Thanks to a previous porch-extension that means its two windows are now internal, the L-shaped room is fairly dark, and at approximately 8 metres x 5 metres never feels quite large enough for all the functions it needs to serve. It’s the room you enter first and you have to walk through it to access the sitting room and stairs, but it also needs to be a place for cooking, eating and playing, as my two-year-old makes very clear by fashioning everything from milk cartons to carrot peelings into imaginary creatures. It felt like it was serving none of these functions particularly well.

The perfectly functional kitchen is built-in along one wall, while there is a woodburner on the opposite wall. Our round dining table – once my husband’s grandparents’ – sits at the end of the space, but we’ve always struggled with where to put it without interrupting the flow of the room. There is also a half-glazed dresser, which provides some storage: the cupboards at the bottom hide tablecloths, serving platters and boxes of crafty bits for my daughter, while the upper half behind the glass plays host to pretty glasses, ceramics and cookbooks. But storage has always been an issue and this room always feels like it’s overflowing with stuff, with little useful storage for all the clutter of daily life.

The solution

‘It’s a very challenging space,’ was the first thing that Patrick said to me when we looked over the floor plan and the handful of images that I had shared with him ahead of our Zoom. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about how we could improve the flow, but it’s tough.’ I was thrilled – and a little bit shocked – by his commitment, but to be honest, this was exactly the validation I needed and it put me at ease. ‘What we need to do is find a way to be as clever as possible with the space you have,’ continued the interior consultant who aims to offer his clients a ‘road map’ that they can follow.

First in that was cracking the layout. Patrick agreed with me that the fact it was a rental meant there was no point in thinking about the walls we could pull down or put up. ‘You don’t want to make the mistake of over-investing,’ he adds. Instead, he agreed that the table, dresser and kitchen units were in the best positions they could be. ‘Leave everything where it is, but I’d swap out the bench running along one side of the round table and replace it with a couple of chairs, which allows you to be a bit more flexible.’ He suggests there might be space for a small slipper or nursing chair or wing back chair, which could look towards the wood burner and provide a comfortable spot to read. Dean Antiques and Howe, of course, do lovely ones, but he advises finding something at a market or antiques shop to suit my slightly more modest budget.