‘It was all about the light,’ says HG101 Hall of Fame honouree Cindy Leveson of her design of this Victorian Scottish castle, which she has spent five years sensitively restoring. Surrounded by mountains, trees and some seriously big skies, its expansive rooms demanded a deft touch with colour. ‘I found the Scottish light sucked the life out of shades that I would normally have specified,’ she explains. ‘It turns tried-and-tested colours into something completely different. The pinky-coral carpet we originally chose for the drawing room had to be changed because when we looked at it in the room, it looked like it had been tangoed. I couldn’t make any fabric, paint or carpet decisions unless I was on site – it was a learning curve.’
The owners of the baronial castle, which was built in 1865 and reconstructed in 1909, are long-term clients of Cindy’s, and gave her the freedom to choose colours that suited the orientation of different rooms. Red – her favourite hue – and a spectrum of blues, ranging from aquamarine to indigo, are the dominant accents. When she first visited, the thing that inspired her was the sheer scale of the rooms. ‘It was never in bad condition, just a little less welcoming than it is now,’ she remembers. ‘My brief was to let the house “exhale”; to let go a bit and relax, with lots of squishy places to sit or lie down. Armchairs and sofas needed to be bigger and deeper. There was also very little colour in the house, which it craved.’
No room was off limits, so Cindy set to work transforming every inch of the castle’s rambling interiors. Her starting points were the floors and fireplaces. ‘One of the first things that struck me was the acres of fitted carpet,’ she says. ‘Installing antique oak boards in every room changed the dynamic completely.’ These boards had once graced a vodka factory in Austria, and were lovingly restored by supplier Ted Todd. Next came rugs: antiques from Robert Stephenson in the rooms, an ‘utterly beautiful’ ornately patterned bespoke runner on the main staircase from David Bamford, and another custom design by Cindy herself on the new staircase that connects one bedroom with its bathroom (each of the ten bedrooms has its own, of course). This was adapted from her painterly ‘Watercolours’ rug collection for Shame Studios, who also crafted this addition. ‘David Bamford’s rugs have a beautifully aged feel to the colours, so nothing jars,’ adds Cindy.
Fireplaces were replaced throughout and came from Jamb, which also made the grand lanterns that hang in the main staircase hall. Here, Cindy installed a Portland stone fireplace where there had previously been a door. ‘It completely changed the vista from the front door and outer hall to something much more welcoming,’ she says. ‘It draws your eye in.’
Growing up with an antiques-dealer mother means Cindy ‘adores the hunt’, which is reflected in the castle’s richly layered furniture and fabrics. ‘I bought an enormous amount of antique furniture for every room, plus lamps and general “stuff”, such as Wemyss Ware, Spongeware and tartanware – all Scottish and very relevant,’ she says. ‘I love building collections. There were very few pieces of furniture that absolutely had to be kept, but I was keen to retain some, not just because they were inherited but because they really suited the house.’ Not everything stayed in the same rooms, though. ‘It’s interesting to move existing pieces around – they can look surprisingly different.’
Among the heirlooms that were reimagined are the dining-room chairs, which Cindy reupholstered in a striped fabric from Guy Goodfellow Collection, forming a dramatic contrast with deep blue patterned-velvet walls (the curtains were made from the same velvet, ‘Gaufrage Rochelle’ by Tissus d’Hélène). Cindy calls this room the castle’s ‘biggest and bravest’ scheme, but in many places, there are subtle transformations. The oak dining table, for instance, was taken back to its original colour – ‘slightly grey and dry’ – by restorer Savino del Prete, who also made the long sofas in the staircase hall to Cindy’s design. ‘He never over-restores – that’s the key. I also bought many pieces from Andy Gibbs at Blank Canvas Antiques, such as an 18th-century bed canopy with original paint. A.T. Cronin Workshop made painted bedposts and pelmets to match, and it’s become a really fabulous bed again.’
The house is now awash with the colour that Cindy felt it craved. The elegant drawing room is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Light Blue’, with flashes of red on plump sofas upholstered in ‘Indira’ fabric by Le Manach at Pierre Frey. Almásy supplied coloured antique mirrors that add a luminous touch to the bedrooms, and a newly expanded boot room in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Pigeon’ features an open fireplace and custom dog beds. Cindy’s attention to detail was unstinting. ‘I always paint clients watercolour sketches of how a room will look and feel,’ she says. ‘It gives them an atmosphere rather than the hard lines of a plan.’ Unable to find enough Delft tiles to clad the fireplaces in the attic bedrooms, she painted her own versions, featuring ‘pictures of things that meant something to the clients’ – thus mirroring, in miniature, the artworks added to the castle by Piers Watson of Watson Westmorland, who homed in on their love of Scotland, dogs, and family. Cindy subsequently painted breakfast and dinner services for the tables in the same style.
This Scottish castle renovation project involved feats on every scale. At one end, there was the mammoth stone crest that now hangs over the boot-room fireplace, which was previously embedded in a bank in the grounds and had to be hauled indoors.
At the other are the castle’s key rings, which Cindy had made from antique bone gaming chips and engraved with the name of each room. ‘I love to decorate as though nothing much has really changed,’ she reflects. ‘It’s great to have clients who trust you when you stress the importance of not over-restoring, and allowing a bit of “tat” into a room. That’s what makes it all believable. I like rooms to feel as though they have always been as they are; perfectly imperfect has always been my goal.’ levesondesign.com
