Image credit Chris Taylor & Harriet Media

Styled by Sarah

Interior styling has become an accidental creative outlet for my associated experiences and visual elements collected from travel, gardening, nature and an innate love of unusual objects that always have a story to tell. I have been privileged to invent schemes, source stock and dress some of the top Norfolk commercial hospitality spaces, accruing experience before deciding on the design direction of my own commercial interior - Sarah's; a Georgian townhouse apartment for rent in the heart of historic Holt.

To make for an ever-changing domesticated scene, a selection of items at Sarah's are always for sale, an assortment of stock and props, all of which can be viewed and purchased via the store.

I am available for freelance styling both commercially and domestically and offer great value for my hourly rate, taking into account over a decade of experience, long hours spent 'cultivating' links with select traders 'in the field' and passing on trade prices directly from a number of top UK interiors brands with whom I have an account.

Current projects include inventing and dressing a set of 11 bedrooms here in North Norfolk in the main Georgian Palladian Hall that is Wolterton Park.

My Services

The following services are available:

  • Comprehensive interiors projects or single room refreshes.

  • Sourcing individual items of stock, a modest finders fee applies.

  • Accompanying me on a sourcing spree. Meet recommended dealers and discover the realities of a full day out 'in the field'.

  • Hire of private places for product shoots, optional styling alongside.

Wolterton Hall

Wolterton Hall is a Georgian residence set within quintessential English parkland. A Palladian house of historical significance, built by Horatio Walpole, brother of Britain's first prime minister Robert, it is intriguing to walk the halls and wonder of past inhabitants doing just same.. I was commissioned to create 11 new bedrooms in the main Hall. Each room is named and each tells a story (researched and written by me) in relation to its occupant. Information on key items dressing the space is also included and these stories are showcased on Wolterton’s website. It's a pleasure to work alongside many trades, both practical and decorative, together the team is gently coaxing Wolterton into a new era.

Here we are in Nelson’s bedroom, he was a frequent visitor and close family friend. A glorious Georgian galleon sets sail and Lady Emma looks on from the wall.

Image credit Simon Buck

The Dial House

Something of an institution, The Dial House at Reepham was a commercial venture combining eating, sleeping - and shopping, thanks to my innovative idea of - ‘everything's for sale’ a unique and fresh combination of hospitality and retail for its day. Diners bought tables and shoppers stopped for coffee! Literally 100's of items of stock all domestically displayed at any one given time. Locals may remember the giant American training plane dive-bombing the corridoor, always maps, seasonal plot dressing and still very much talked about now. It was a time and a place of much magic, magic that was shared with, and remembered by, so many of you.

Commissioned to create individual tea trays and desk arrangements for six ‘Grand Tour’ bedrooms, here we have China; Homage paid to the then passion for everything blue and white, copied by Minton. I also added Crossley turntables in complimentary colourways and installed an LP library on the landing.

Image credit Chris Taylor

Product shoots

A number of private and personal locations and props may be booked for product shoots; Upstairs at Sarah's, my own apartment downstairs, my classic Trafalgar blue Morris Minor Nelson and my two allotment plots (now over twenty years old, a country oasis in town) complete with beehives. Recent shoots include indie brands Pentire Drinks and Black & Blum picnic-ware and London-based Brompton Bicycles. Additional styling services are also available. 

Seen here is a selection of Black & Blum top quality picnic-ware, designed in London, made to last. A styled shoot that took us from Sarah’s kitchen to the North Norfolk saltmarsh shores. Their cookbook, packed with great picnic ideas, sits up at Sarah’s.

Image credit Harriet Media

Byfords Group

Responsible for some of the top hospitality locations across Norfolk, I oversaw a refresh of Byfords 16 bedrooms and cafe display. Each room was styled around an activity in the locality. When taken together as a whole, they provided 16 ideas of things to see and do - Norfolk nature and hares, wildflowers, birding the shores, stately homes, gardens, fossil hunting. I also helped take The Ffolkes back to its original coaching inn days (on the main route from King's Lynn to Norwich) delivering six coaching inn rooms alongside a bar and garden room dining area. A modern twenty bedroom block followed six months later in what was the old stables. Georgian is my preferred era and I was in my element spending close to a year sourcing top hats and tankards, settles and saddles. 

Up in the attic, tucked into the eaves, room six epitomises travel. A world (collective noun?) of globes, canvas boots, Grand Tour prints and binoculars. The headboard shelf arrangement invented by me.

Image credit Chris Taylor