An interior designer's view on combining old and new: Annie Stevens talks about antiques and interiors

Interior design, especially for a client's main residence, is about a true carefully built-up balance of many different, many times disparate, elements. Unlike a holiday house or boat which is many times designed to a theme, a residence has to have an added value of everyday comfort and as well as being a stimulating environment, it also has to be able to house valued memorabilia, items of personal importance and family heirlooms. For the interior designer, this already places a change of emphasis in the way they can approach a of recent origin design. The limitations and necessary inclusions placed upon a new look for an interior can appear irreconcilable. Designers also ne to take into account the urgencys and personality of the whole family.

upon a recent project with a young London-based brace I was given a awful chance to mix my have Modernist style with the Victorian heritage of the house and the clients' delight in of antiques. This mixing of of advanced age and new in a 'classic traditional' mode of speech not only suited the space constraints of the extent sizes, but also enabled one as well as the other me and the clients to have feeling a part of the design proces as the flexibility in the design enabled the clients' personality to shine in the reflection of their personal acquisitions.

The clients were vehement antique shoppers and spent many weekends in stores and at fairs. While antiques for them were ofttimes impulse buys made for the delight in of the piece, antique fairs like as Olympia are fantastic places for interior designers like me to source items that will help to mingle pieces bought for sheer pleasure with the of recent origin design in a cohesive fashion. June Olympia in particular is an inspiring place to bring clients to exhibit them how pieces can work together, as the dealers there dispose of so much time and talent displaying their beautiful stock. Prior to the fair opening, a certain number of dealers spend weeks creating a stand that is tantamount to a small house with consummately styled rooms upstairs and down!

In the dining latitude one of the clients' antique rug eases delicately in front of a contemporary Italian-styled sofa, smooth cushions and modern art. This balances the large polished mahogany table and antique chandelier. A space beautiful in its simplicity, as this scope is, where the clients would be hosting greatest in quantity of their entertaining, it was befitting that the colour and vibrancy should be brought by the agency of the owners, their guests and the aliment rather than the decoration.

The kitchen in these clients' house was predictably the greatest in quantity modern-styled room in the house, a finished example of the delicate old/new balance I wanted to achieve. While the appliances were all true high-tech and modern, surrounded through contemporary red leather chairs, a simple antique oak table introduces not solitary an organic alternative to the metallic shine, on the other hand also a solidity of age to an otherwise cutting-edge collection of designs. In the library, a swing styled for the long British nights (that frequently seem like they never end) I allowed the colours of the clients' antique rug to dictate the scheme, bringing a terracotta and dusky palette to a room for calm relaxation. Beneath another antique-fair sourced chandelier, of great depth leather club chairs and a sofa seat sit in brow of a glass-topped table, in prime position to face the large plasma shield television. Bookcases line the available wall space to proffer an alternative to the moving image.

Above all other while involved with this throw out I enjoyed the daily challenge of trying to incorporate the clients' urgencys and wants with the restrictions of the space and design. I was able to do this through getting to understand the personality of the clients and interpreting what they really wanted. by dint of providing old nuances in fields that were heavily modern and novel references in rooms biased towards the past, I managed to achieve a balance, rather than a divide, between the elderly and the new.

Annie Steven is Chairman of the British Interior Design Association, for more information upon BIDA visit www.BIDA.org

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