‘Home is where I feel safe. It’s my happy place’

The Coach House conversation: Cath Kidston

Designer Cath Kidston will forever be associated with vintage chic, floral prints and polka dots, and an aesthetic steeped in country-house nostalgia, although she sold her stake in her namesake brand almost a decade ago. Since then, she has set up a creative design studio, the aptly named Joy of Print, for which she creates fabrics and wallpapers infused with her uplifting, instinctive use of colour and pattern. 

Cath has a theory that it takes seven years for a house to feel truly lived in. She bought her home in Notting Hill in 2019, but already it has the air of a much-loved and truly settled-in space. She also has a country house in Gloucestershire that she bought 12 years ago – she calls it her happy place, so it’s this home we focus on in our conversation for The Coach House. It’s where she and husband Hugh Padgham, a much-awarded record producer who has worked with David Bowie, The Police and Genesis, spend much of their time. And it’s her garden and greenhouse here that have inspired her latest venture, the geranium-scented bath and body range, C.Atherley. 

I’ve spoken to lots of designers in my years as a journalist and editor of an interiors magazine, and most are incredibly generous with their time and insight. Cath takes this to another level, though – so warm, kind and thoughtful in her words and resolutely unwilling to talk about her impact on the look and feel of our homes, or her design legacy (preferring to namecheck Rosi de Ruig and Rose Uniacke instead).

More than a place to decorate, for Cath, home is a place to feel safe and to create an atmosphere of warmth and welcome. Let’s make a house call…

Can you describe your home for us?

It's in the Cotswolds, near Stroud. We viewed it on a very rainy day, and it was just this magic spot; a heart-stopping space. The house is a higgledy-piggledy mix of things. It was a farmhouse in the 17th century, then had a smarter front put on it in the 18th century. Later, the 18th-century part had little Gothic windows put in. So it has a beautiful front and extensions of different periods around the back. It’s made from lovely, pale Cotswold stone, has tall windows and a wonderful view. It was the view that attracted me to it. The house is in this magical area called Paradise Valley; it’s absolutely divine, you can see for miles and you don't see anything else. 

What I loved was the atmosphere of the house. A family had lived here for many years and they looked after it but hadn't really modernised it. So the house was nice and sleepy, but with all the lovely old stone floors, wood, shutters and fireplaces – the bones of a house that I had dreamt of. It’s quite rare that a house hasn’t been disturbed, isn’t it? So our job was to put in new plumbing, mend the roof, do all the structural stuff that perhaps hadn't been done for a bit, and sort of make it more solid.

What did you think about when you were decorating the house?

The question is, how do you want people to feel? I want them to feel welcome and relaxed. One hundred per cent, it's about making it welcoming and not too formal, and comfortable. 

Do you have many people come to your home?

So, we're really hot and cold with that. For quite a lot of this year, we've had hardly anyone at home. One thing we like about the house is that there’s one area where we have our telly room, our little office, the kitchen and our bedroom, which is relatively self-contained and feels very cosy when there's just my husband and me, or when my lovely stepdaughter and her husband come down. So we often have much quieter weekends, with just us and the dogs.

Then the weekend before last, I had 16 members of family staying, so it’s crazy and the whole place wakes up; I have to go and open up the top floor. It’s the sort of house you can switch on or off for Christmas, holidays, whatever. I really love that.

Your walls are covered in artworks. What draws you to paintings and pictures?

It’s been an evolving passion for me ever since I was young. Some are family things. In our sitting room, I've got a pair of big panels by the fireplace that belonged to my mum and dad. My dad was really interested in pictures and collecting. I think the first pictures I bought were when I was 17 and I had a wage packet; I bought a couple of drawings then. 

When I was younger, I liked more traditional figurative paintings, and as I've grown older, I'm drawn more towards abstracts. My taste evolves – I'm really into engravings at the moment. I don’t have much more space for pictures, so I like choosing things for other people now. But in our telly room, there's a lovely yellow picture over the armchair, and that was done by my great aunt, who was a painter called Corisande Soames. She had this wonderful colour sense and beautiful pictures, and my sister and I inherited the contents of her studio. So that set things off. 

In that room, for example, there's a find from a flea market in New York. There's a picture of some great-grandfather, who I think was a bit pompous, on a horse. In the room above, I bought some abstract pictures on a trip to Barcelona. In the kitchen, there are two tea towels hanging up by Chris Ofili, because I love his work and you can buy the tea towels at the Tate. They aren't at all valuable. In the bedroom, there’s a Picasso over the fireplace but it’s a scarf and when I bought that it wasn't expensive at all.