Readers Kitchens: Abigail Ahern

I know! No Readers Kitchens articles for ages and then two in less than a week!

I was fortunate enough to meet hot interior guru Abigail Ahern last week, when she kindly let me poke about her beautifully stylish kitchen and quiz her for design tips. She was hosting a very enjoyable design trends afternoon with method, from which I returned home and decided to paint everything black. Well, not really, but almost.

Name Abigail Ahern

Location East London

Occupation Interior designer, author.

What do you do in your kitchen and with whom?

I’m obsessed with cooking, actually working from home, it’s a way of relaxing and my husband can’t cook, so he perches on the bar stool sips wine and we yabber and I cook. And that’s what we do every single evening. I tend not to entertain too much on a week night because our hours are quite crazy, but the weekend I do. Everything I make I make from scratch, I never buy package food because I really do love to cook.

Can you describe your style?

My style is glamourous, eclectic and it’s a little bit…..well, someone on my blog said, it’s ‘gentleman’s club meets Wonderwoman’, I thought that was a really good description, so that’s what I’m going to say! It’s quite theatrical, but also incredibly glamourous, it’s hard to describe it in a nutshell. I’m a big lover of colour, but the ones I’ve used here at home are all quite ‘knocked back’, so there’s not too many punches of colour in one space, it’s all quite, layered. I tend not to use too many colours in one room because I want the overall affect to be sophisticated and not crazy. I love it, but I here I’ve really reigned it in.

I think with age you get more confident with style. When I was younger I was all at sea, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I had a white house, I didn’t really have a style but as I got older, I pushed it more and got more confident. So my style’s kind of grown up with me. It’s never been intentional, it’s all been very organic, but age has a big thing to do with making it all work… a feeling that ‘I can do that’ or ” I can try that’ rather than being a bit  restricted.

What’s your favourite or most used item in the kitchen?

My most used item is the first thing I bought for the house, which was really impractical and Grahame almost killed, it’s a concrete rocking chair. We had no money and I was supposed to buy a sofa but I just saw this and had to have it. We had to share it for a year cos I’d spent all our budget on this rocking chair. In the kitchen it’s my juicer, because I literally juice three times a day, I’m obsessed with juicing.

Abigail’s website is an excellent resource for advice and tips on decorating and starting your own business, but careful, too much pottering around it and you’ll want to paint everything black too.