How Our Interior Design Service Brought This Hove Home to Life

Elevating Sabrina’s Ideas 

Sabina had plenty of interior design ideas and her own sense of style. With such lovely architectural details (such as cornicing and stained-glass windows) at play, she wanted to do the house justice. She explains, “I enlisted OKA as I love the furniture, but I’d also never worked with this scale before, so what I really needed help with was the layout.

“With the rooms’ large proportions and high ceilings, I wanted to make sure I was choosing the right pieces and arranging them all correctly.” Enter Charlotte, whose vision for the design was to “make it really special, while also making sure that our client and her family could really live in it.”    

Bringing Style to Every Room 

The design process began with a site visit, where Charlotte and Sabina discussed colour palettes and key furniture items - both from the OKA collection and what Sabina owned and loved already. “She has a lot of her own quirky pieces and inherited things that she wanted to incorporate, so I got to work with those as well. We do that quite a lot; it makes everything feel even more bespoke,” says Charlotte.

In terms of a brief, Sabina gave the designer open rein – a strategy that did not disappoint. When Charlotte came back a few weeks later to present some interior design ideas, it was the TV room that her client was most delighted with. “I would never have thought that I could have fitted those pieces in there.

“I really struggled with that room; the proportions of it and how to make it feel cosy. She came up with an amazing solution,” she tells us. The paint colour, which they chose together, stepped it up a level and completed the intimate atmosphere.

This room is a particular favourite of Charlotte’s, too. “The footstool has a piece of my heart. I’ve wanted to use that fabric [Christopher Farr’s Chubby Check in green] ever since I saw it. And Sabina loved it just as much as I did, so I thought ‘why not?’ That’s where I started, I based the room around it,” she says.  

Tailoring Furniture to Match 

An added benefit of our interior design service is being able to upholster OKA pieces in any material of your choice. Our designers work with an array of beautiful fabric houses, so you can truly go as wild as you like.

Sabina picked some tailored sofas that were perfect to lounge on and would replace existing uncomfortable ones. “The custom fabric was a brilliant bonus because you can really tailor it to your light and your space, and you know it’s not one that anyone else has,” she says.

The mix of classic and contemporary shapes fit seamlessly into the home. Each piece plays a key part in how Charlotte built the colour scheme and atmosphere. In the garden room, there’s a light green clever linen that has a good light-fastness rating and is stain resistant. Perfect for the bright space and how the young family use it (it’s the most in-demand spot in the daytime).

“I knew I wanted to bring green in for sure, due to the garden right outside, and then lots of warm tones as they’re Sabina’s favourites,” says Charlotte. In the more formal sitting room, it was “very much about picking out the colours from Sabina’s rug and building the different textures and fabrics around that,” Charlotte muses. “The red on the sofa works so well with the monochrome ottoman in the middle; it’s quite a dark room so the colour and pattern work really well.”  

Charlotte’ uses different types and scales of pattern that run throughout the home. “The space is so big it can take it,” she explains. They’re the threads that tie the fun, cosy space together in an effect that is perfectly composed and incredibly welcoming. Something Sabina wanted from the off. “Even though each room has a different purpose, I wanted it all to feel cohesive, which it certainly does. Using OKA’s service paid off,” she says.