When a young family swapped life in London for a village near Fontainebleau, British-based designer Sean Symington helped them to create not just a beautiful, joyful home, but a sense of belonging, writes Rosalind Sack
SEAN SYMINGTON DESIGNED THIS JOYFUL DINING ROOM WITH ROBUST, MISMATCHED CHAIRS, INCLUDING TWO FROM IKEA IN SLIPCOVERS, AND A SCULPTURAL WHITE ALBERTO CHANDELIER BY VISUAL COMFORT HUNG OVER THE TABLE. IMAGE: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
There can be a certain unease in living in a house that holds two people’s belongings pushed into the same rented rooms, but not yet a merged life together. For one couple – she Parisian, he half English and half French – and their young children, when the pace of living in London began to wear thin, they looked further afield to create their first true family home. On discovering a house with huge potential near to good international schools in a rural village near Fontainebleau – a place tucked into one of France’s largest forests, yet an easy commute into Paris – they fell for its charm.
So began an 18-month renovation working closely with UK-based designer Sean Symington and his studio, to create a home that is now so layered with pattern, colour and personality – cheerful, breezy, yet cosy – that it is easy to forget that it began as a somewhat dilapidated building with a dirt-floor cellar.
An Evolving Brief
Sean’s involvement began almost by accident after being recommended to the homeowner by another client and initially agreeing to help just with furniture and decoration, since the architect and builder had already been appointed.
Some weeks later, she got in touch again, this time more urgently. The homeowner hated what had been assembled without him – smart, contemporary, entirely missing the mark of her vision. So the architect was reassigned to project management, and Sean’s studio took over the design direction in full, including drawings, joinery, electrical layouts and interior architecture.
The grand entrance hall had originally opened onto a kitchen on one side and a sitting room on the other, with nowhere for coats, boots or the chaos of a family with young children. So Sean’s team split the old kitchen to carve out a boot room, then relocated the kitchen to the opposite, brighter side of the house, where it now connects naturally to the dining room. Downstairs, a forgotten dirt-floor cellar became a proper scullery, complete with a yellow-painted pantry and a laundry room, alongside a study room and home gym – square footage nobody had accounted for.
The brief itself shifted just as much as the floor plan. At the outset, the client described a “cottagey” aesthetic – Colefax and Fowler ruffles, scalloped edges, blue gingham for the boys’ room and pink for the girls’. But as the long build gave her time to sit with fabric swatches and consider, for the first time, about what she actually liked, something looser and more painterly emerged. As Sean recalls, she realised that she didn’t want the blinds to match the headboard exactly; she preferred an old textile thrown over a sofa, a cushion that didn’t quite belong. An avid painter with a serious, ever-growing art collection she began to trust colour and imperfection over precision and, with Sean’s expertise, the project became her own creative outlet as much as her family’s home.
LAYERS OF PATTERN, PRINT AND COLOUR CREATE A HOME THAT FEELS COMFORTABLE AND COLLECTED. IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
Fabric, Print and the Art of Layering
That instinct is reflected in every room. The gingham survived, but it is reinvented in a soft, cosy snug behind French doors off the sitting room, with joyful gallery walls and one ‘artwork’ cleverly concealing the television. It remains one of Sean’s favourite rooms in the house: intimate, shut off from the rest of the ground floor, unmistakably a family space where children are allowed to jump on the sofas.
Pattern runs through the house like a connecting thread and Schumacher’s Aditi, a block-print floral appears in the main curtains throughout the ground floor, from the boot room to the hallway. It was the fabric, Sean notes, that tied the whole scheme together, chosen because the client has a longstanding love of block prints.
Upstairs, the primary bathroom took an unplanned turn: originally destined to be papered in Windrush by Lewis & Wood, Sean instead used CommonRoom’s Climbing Curios by Fee Greening – a kookier, more mythical print that he says is simply “very her”. In the master bedroom itself, the headboard is upholstered in a Kit Kemp embroidery for Chelsea Textiles, a nod to the client’s admiration for Kemp’s exuberant, maximalist style. While in the guest room, the ochre tones of the scrolling fern wallpaper sit beautifully alongside an upholstered headboard and bed canopy in Lewis & Wood’s Regatta.
None of it was chosen in isolation. Sean and his client sourced together at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour in London, then flew samples out to France in a fleet of ten suitcases, laying out trays of swatches for a full presentation on-site.
Sean’s belief in the power of mixing and layering eras of furniture and collectibles, creates individual spaces that feel collected rather than chosen from a catalogue. Antiques were gathered from Kempton Market, Tetbury and auction houses – including, improbably, French antique pieces bought in England and shipped back across the Channel to sit in a French country house. The client’s own collection of art, plates and objects was folded in throughout and school-house white walls were chosen to let the artwork do the talking. One of the most special pieces is the yellow chest of drawers in the entrance hall which a friend commissioned decorative artist Tess Newell to hand paint and presented to the family as a moving gift. Shades of yellow are repeated throughout the house – on woodwork, fabric, even the bath.
Sourcing and finishing wasn’t without its cross-channel friction. Details that British homeowners fight to preserve – such as in-frame kitchens, shaker joinery, brass butt hinges – were treated locally as things to rip out. Even brassware proved a challenge: the client’s wish for Lefroy Brooks-style Victorian lever taps which are easily sourced in the UK, had to be tracked down at greater expense and effort in France. Sean describes the process at times as like “speaking a foreign language” – in more than one sense.
(LEFT) TESS NEWELL-PAINTED DRAWERS SPARK JOY IN THE ENTRANCE HALL; (RIGHT) SEAN SYMINGTON RECONFIGURED THE ROOMS TO EASE THE FLOW AND WORK WITH MODERN LIVING, IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
Belonging, on Both Sides of the Channel
The parallel is one Sean recognises intimately having moved from his native Canada to London a decade ago. He found the harder transition wasn’t that international move, but relocating from London to Bath in 2022, an hour from his studio’s base in Tetbury. London had always felt international, moments from Heathrow and a flight back to Canada; in Bath he suddenly felt far from everything familiar. Four years on, he has carved out his own sense of belonging – transforming a long-forgotten former student house into a home with a style he calls ‘classic with a fresh whimsy,’ complete with a killer view over the picturesque city and countryside beyond.
That same instinct for building a home out of a mix of backgrounds runs through his studio, too. Sean’s design director and CAD technician are also both Canadian – from Toronto and Ontario respectively. His communications director is American and the rest of the team are English and Irish. A genuinely international studio that was uniquely well placed to understand a French-based project built for a client anxious about her own move.
Despite worries the village might feel too sleepy, or that the children would struggle to settle, the family moved in just before Christmas 2023, with Sean returning in January to finish hanging the art and add the final touches, room by room. Watching the family happily live, move and make memories in the space for the first time was “the most fulfilling part,” he says. “It’s a very happy home which reflects their good energy. They are a lovely family.”
A year on, the client rang Sean with an update and an invitation to stay. It is the most reassuring ending for Sean, yet still very much the beginning for a family who have forged a very special sense of belonging here.
PLAYFUL AND COLOURFUL PIECES ALONGSIDE THE ELEGANT PROPORTIONS AND SWEEPING STAIRCASES SPARK JOY IN THIS BEAUTiFUL 18TH CENTURY FRENCH HOME. IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
THE LIGHT-FILLED KITCHEN WITH CABINETRY IS PAINTED IN VERT DE TERRE AND THE ISLAND PAINTED IN INDIA YELLOW BY FARROW & BALL. IMAGE: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
(LEFT) YELLOW REAPPEARS THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE; (RIGHT) AN ART STUDIO CREATED FOR THE OWNER. IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
THE STRIKING ARTWORK OVER THE FIREPLACE ANCHORS THE SITTING ROOM AND ITS COLOUR PALETTE INCLUDING THE OTTOMAN BY ISABELLE BALDWIN. IMAGE: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
(LEFT) THE TOP FLOOR WHICH HOUSES THE CHILDREN’S BEDROOMS WAS RECONFIGURED AND SINGS WITH ZINGY COLOURS. (RIGHT) THE WALLPAPER SETS THE TONE FOR THE COLOURFUL BATHROOM. IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
COMMONROOM’S WALLPAPER BY FEE GREENING ALONGSIDE THE BRIGHT YELLOW BATHTUB ADDS A FUN AND FOLKSY FEEL TO THE OTHERWISE CLASSIC BATHROOM. IMAGE: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
THE GYM AND OFFICE SPACE CREATED IN WHAT HAD BEEN A DARK AND FORGOTTEN BASEMENT. IMAGES: CHRIS WAKEFIELD
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