Inspiration of the Week: the classic style of a Regency vicarage in Kent

There’s something about English interior style. For many (including droves of Americans, who’ve translated it across the pond) it’s the pinnacle of domestic design: both comfortable and classy, unashamedly uninterested in rigour, rules or perfection and cheerfully welcoming of age, wear and tear. Dogs are welcome on sofas and the more pictures on the walls the better. The look was pioneered by John Fowler, picked up by Nicky Haslam et al and is now carried through by Salvesen Graham, James Mackie and Lucy Hammond Giles, among others. It’s also beautifully illustrated by this three-bedroom Regency vicarage in West Malling, near Maidstone in Kent, which came on the market this week.

Its generous proportions – visible even from outside, where rows of marching french and sash windows speak of well-sized rooms and tall ceilings – lend themselves to classic décor. They allow for curtains (Colefax & Fowler, naturally) long enough to pull off a pelmet, floral chintzes with big prints for big furniture, and patterned wallpapers that clash happily in spaces large enough to carry them. Everywhere, a mish-mash of antique objects and pretty textiles seems to sum up the layering and flexibility that’s at the heart of the English style. Occasionally a quilt will match the curtains, but a profusion of other eye-catching details – period features, handsome brown furniture – saves spaces from feeling too like schemes.

Lighting in homes like this one is key. Not for the classic decorator the harsh gleam of a spotlight, who instead favours something with a more diffuse glow. Table and floor lamps – we like ours with five-amp plugs, so you can control them from the wall – are the way forward and in this house, they populate almost every room. Nothing can compete, however, with the borrowed light that falls down the stairwell from the skylight, nor that which washes through those huge windows.

That’s not to say there aren’t modern touches here, which – rather than seamlessly blending – seem to work because of their differences. Take the steely master bathroom – a touch of sleek amid the shabby-chic. In the main, however, the elegance of this house lies in its seeming effortless. How does one master that? Watch and learn, we say.