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There’s a challenge to decorating in Scotland that has little to do with the notorious damp. “The winters can be long and dark,” says designer Emma Sims-Hilditch, who decorated this newly built neo-Georgian family seat for Stuart and Amy Grant in the Highland foothills outside Perth and Kinross. Sims-Hilditch had already worked with the Grants on three previous projects, but this was to be their crown jewel, set on a 17-acre estate with historic gardens. Their brief had nothing to do with cliché or pomp. “They didn’t want the usual Scottish interiors. No dark wood. No tartan,” says the designer. “Stuart told me, ‘It shouldn’t feel like you’re walking into a golf club.’”
Before construction began, the owners spent several years working closely with architect Robert Adam of ADAM Architecture on the design of the neo-Georgian house. Landscape designer Simon Johnson was enlisted to help restore the 17-acre property’s 100-year-old gardens, originally planned by noted Edwardian-era gardener Thomas H. Mawson.
Christopher Horwood
A double-height entrance hall bathed in a warm, rosy hue (Edward Bulmer’s Jonquil) welcomes visitors to the manor house. The plaid stair runner, by Anta Carpet, riffs on classic tartan. The 16th-century tapestry was found at the Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in London’s Battersea Park.
Christopher HorwoodWhat they yearned for was an antidote to gray northern skies in the form of warm, cheerful color—pale pinks and yellows pushed just bright enough to glow—and prints that evoke the blooming garden beds outside, even when they’re covered in frost. They wanted a house where their young children would be free to roam and explore, with rooms that don’t take themselves too seriously.
Situated between the kitchen and the dining room, the library needed to complement both spaces; walls covered in Concini by Pierre Frey pull in hues from each. The chair is upholstered in a Penny Morrison print.
Christopher Horwood
A handpainted de Gournay wallcovering in a verdant shade of green provided the starting point for the dining room. Sims-Hilditch chose a bold dentil molding to create contrast with the delicate chinoiserie pattern.
Christopher HorwoodThat ethos is immediately evident in the entrance hall, double-height and genuinely huge, its walls washed in Edward Bulmer’s Jonquil paint, a pink so softly shot through with yellow it refracts like the inside of a shell. “It was chosen for its happy tone,” says Sims-Hilditch, who suggested the color after Stuart sent a picture of the great hall at his parents’ home in Ayrshire, which his late decorator father painted a salmony hue. There are subtle hints of the Highlands—a plaid woven wool runner, rough stone floors, antlers sourced from the estate’s own gamekeeper shed—but zero pretension. The mix is personal, characterful, and not so much as a pinch fussy.
Millwork painted a warm white—Savage Ground by Farrow & Ball—“gives this room a golden glow at night.” The dining chairs are upholstered in Fermoie’s Carskiey Broad Stripe linen. A Robert Polidori photograph strikes a contemporary note above the glossy red Charles Orchard serving console.
Christopher Horwood
A glazed screen separates a sitting room (or “snug”) from the Plain English kitchen, which is anchored by a rich green center island surrounded by Howe London stools. The custom fabric by Paper Mills on the windows was created especially for the project. Pendant shades, Fermoie.
Christopher Horwood
There’s no shortage of country charm in the boot room, which doubles as a spot for arranging flowers from the garden. A gun table from Arcadia Antiques anchors the space, with millwork painted in Farrow & Ball’s Castle Grey.
Christopher HorwoodThat calibration runs through every room. The library sits at the heart of the house—you come off the hall into it, and it connects to the drawing room and kitchen. Stuart chose its vivid Pierre Frey fabric for the walls himself. Its focal point is a bold, almost baroque flower in green bracketed by red chevron-like stripes, but it lands just right because the oak-paneled woodwork got a coat of quiet paint to absorb the fireworks. The sitting room piles curtains in a GP & J Baker floral with lush, tendriling blooms onto a sofa in a crisp Colefax & Fowler stripe and an ottoman covered in a worldly, faded Robert Kime textile. It might be a lot if it weren’t for the soothing palette—subtle, barely-there green-gray walls—and the actual roses climbing outside the windows, planted by landscape designer Simon Johnson to echo the colors within.
The primary bedroom is wrapped in a sweet Colefax & Fowler wallpaper; ottoman in a Penny Morrison fabric; dresser, Chelsea Textiles.
Christopher Horwood
Millwork in the adjoining dressing room is painted in Blue Grey by Farrow & Ball; desk, Chelsea Textiles, sconces and shades, Pooky.
A chinoiserie-style Vaughan lantern hangs in the dressing area; faux-bamboo tray, Emma Sims-Hilditch for Chelsea Textiles.
The dining room is the keynote. A leaf-green de Gournay chinoiserie mural covers the walls, and against it, a lacquered crimson sideboard that pops like a punchline. There were plans to hang a Victorian pastoral scene from Stuart’s collection, but at the last moment—“we were holding the painting up, about to bang the nails in,” says Sims-Hilditch—he threw a curveball in the form of a contemporary Robert Polidori photograph. “It worked beautifully—we loved the juxtaposition with the wallpaper and the classical architecture.” An elemental sisal rug underfoot seals the deal: “In all the old Scottish country houses, there would’ve been Persian carpets, but we wanted to bring the formality down a bit.”
All that magic blends into a new-build house that feels gorgeously broken in—things gathered rather than installed, with a warm embrace that welcomes you in from the mist in wet boots and makes you feel immediately, deliciously at home.
In a guest room, wallpaper designed by Willow Crossley for Barneby Gates captures the garden glory just outside. Pillows in Penny Morrison’s Haveli block print add a sunny touch.
Christopher Horwood
The palette of soft greens and yellows continues into the bathroom, with Soane Britain’s Scrolling Fern wallpaper and a roman shade in Schumacher’s Juniper Block Print; bathtub, The Water Monopoly.
Christopher HorwoodTHIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 20 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!
