Today I visited Polesden Lacey in Surrey. The Polesden Lane is today managed by The National Trust and is open for everyone to visit. But for around a 100 years ago was the estate used as a weekend party house for the Edwardian socialite in London.
The Polesden Lacey is an amazing example of the Edvardian architecture, interior design and lifestyle. It was built to entertain and have large dinner parties. My favourite room in the house was the library. It was a lovely mix of white walls in Edwardian style, bookshelves with old books and blue china of big vases and plates decorated above the bookshelves.
The fireplace in the library
The library had white walls that reflected the style of the exterior of the house. The house had an installation with the theme of jewellery. This is the reason why there where pearls hanging our of the fireplace.
The library had a large desk behind the sofa that was facing the fireplace. On the desk was had two large lamps in bright blue. This tied the blue in the china and in the lamps together and balanced the colour equally over the entire room.
There were also used a lot of yellow in the room, the curtains and the sofa in front of the fireplace had the same yellow. Mixing light colours like yellow and white was a look that became more normal to do under the Edwardian area compared to the Victorian area.
The room did not have a high ceiling and therefore there was no pendant lamp that could be the centre piece for lighting. Instead, there was lamps attached to the walls. It also had one on each side of the fireplace. The two lamps on the table operated as the centre piece in the room, instead of a pendant lamp. This worked well since the desk was the key furniture in the room.
Large white and blue china vases was placed all over the room
My learning’s from the room is that you can mix old and new with old furniture and more lighter colours. you just need to be careful with balancing the colours in the room with all the whites.
Have you ever visited an Edwardian home?
