In conversation with Quitterie de Pascal

You are a decoration addict, but once you’ve closed aside your favorite magazine, how to adapt the precepts of the experts at home?

Here are some of our favourite personalities who havebeen kind enough to share this vision of interior design. With generosity, they indulge you with their choices, share tips and inspiring advice.

Today we talk to

I founded my interior decoration and interior architecture practice just over five years ago. It was a change of career for me as prior to that I had worked for ten years at Versailles. I now mainly work on total renovation projects with an architectural and a decorative element. And I also have three (soon to be four) children.

Your interior decorating mantra?

Have fun, use colour and mix textures.

What do you think of the concept of good taste?

For me, good taste is when something beautiful seems completely natural. In interior decorating, it’s all about balance: never too much and never too little. And you always want to give the impression that things were made to be together. Good taste is something beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, elegant, and ‘delicious’ to look at in the sense that it procures delight or pleasure.

If you were a room in the house?

The kitchen, without hesitation! It’s the room I most love to work in (with all its nooks and crannies), the room where everyone comes together, and where we spend time with our friends. I am particularly drawn to open kitchens which are the heart of the home as well as feeling like the place to be!

I’d be a photographer. No-one in particular. It’s just that I admire the photographer’s ability to capture a moment, to choose an angle, a perspective. I feel that there are a lot of similarities to my work as an interior architect. We have to think about perspective, just as a photographer does, and we have to think about the way a room looks upon entering so as to ensure that natural light, lighting, and materials all work together in a space.

Your dream project?

A restaurant or a hotel! I love the idea of a place where people come together, a place where you are simply passing through rather than living. I think you can be so much more daring decoratively speaking.

The colour of bougainvillier flowers! I’m just obsessed with using the colour in every form: paint, bedlinen and clothing!

Your commitment to a better tomorrow?

I think I have a lot more to learn in this area but I will certainly keep trying to preserve traditional features where possible as well as using antiques wherever possible rather than buying new.  

Château life

My time spent working at Versailles has definitely influenced my vision of interior decoration. I really honed my aesthetic and my architectural vision and learned so much about materials and how to preserve traditional features. I also discovered artisanship, such as the use of gold leaf and paint, carpentry, woodwork and restoration.

Black power I absolutely love to use black when I decorate. I like it with white but also with other colours. Details are really brought to the fore when set against black (and it’s also very useful when you want to make something disappear). And I also love to use it for a chiaroscuro effect when you move from the dark to the light or the other way around.

Colour has a marvellous ability to structure different areas within a space. Sometimes our clients struggle with the idea but once the colours have been chosen, you realise the power of colour. Firtsly colour decorates a room but more than that, it actually makes the next phase of decorating easier. Usinng white everywhere is actually much harder as you have to really focus on finding the right objects to finish a space. The choice of fabric – bedlinen, cushions, throws - then becomes much more important.

Bespoke or treasure hunting?

Both! Bespoke furniture allows you to really focus on detail, to do whatever you want and to improve upon what you already have. Antiques breathe life into a room and give a house soul. There is nothing more beautiful than patina or aged wood to make a room seem totally unique.

Wallpaper: everywhere or not at all? I prefer to use wallpaper parsimoniously. I find it works best in smaller areas such as a corridor or a loo or a niche. Unless I absolutely fall in love with something I tend only to use it sparingly in a bedroom or a living room so that you don’t tire of it over time.

The devil is in the detail

For me there are three phases in a project:

• Your need to work out how the space will used from an architectural perspective;
• Then you need to think about decorative elements starting with materials, furniture and lighting;
• And then the last phase is to really work on the finer decorative details. This is the hardest bit but it’s where a room really comes into its own.

A sense of perspective

Always! 3D tools are the best friend of the interior architect. You can get a sense of architectual perspectives, light and colour.

Your favourite phase in a project?

When you start to put all of the materials and decorative elements side by side. You’re nearly there but you still have quite a lot of freedom. And then you need to sort throught your choices to find the thread that holds everything together, that gives real identity and harmony to a space.

And what is that thread? For me it’s usually colour. I use two or three shades in varying intensity to create a guiding theme from the entrance and on through the house. It’s also important to use neutral areas (white or cream and black) between more colourful spaces to rest the eye and to have greater freedom in your choices.