My Place: Lisa Riddoch

Lisa Riddoch opens the front door of her live/work unit in Paintworks with a beaming smile. A set of stairs continue up to the family’s comfortable home, while a door to the leads through to the studio area that Lisa works from as an interior designer under the moniker Mum Does Design.

In the two years that she, husband Gordon and their children six-year-old Evie and 17-month-old Harry have lived here, the house has been transformed from blank canvas new-build to personality-filled space, particularly the children’s rooms.

Toddler Harry’s room is filled with greenery collected from nearby Arnos Vale cemetery

The industrial vibe of the studio is a masterclass in warm minimalism. Greenery spills from planters attached to the walls, and dangles from the black powder-coated scaffolding poles that have been used to construct a free-standing mezzanine level under the high ceilings. Up on this new level is desk and craft space for Lisa, opening up the versatile space below for visiting guests, workshops or large-scale creative projects.

“Our main focus was the studio when we moved in,” Lisa says over a cup of tea. “We did a lot of research into building the mezzanine and finding someone creative to make the vision real for us.” The man for the job was Ash Bonser, The Gentleman Scaffolder, and in a weekend the structure was up. Lisa and Gordon took a trip to B&Q to buy boards to form huge bespoke desks and, retaining the original white walls, the room soon took shape.

The spacious studio in the live/work space is what sold the home to Lisa and Gordon

“I need white walls because, as an interior designer, I’m dealing with colour, patterns and textures all the time. I need to be able to visualise, so the room around me can’t be too distracting,” Lisa says. “I like bringing in wood elements because it’s cosy – a touch of nature in a huge room with white walls. It needs that warm touch.”

The studio was the space that sold the house to the family, having moved from nearby Brislington. “In some ways, we’ve moved away from the perfect house: it was a nice size, easy for getting prams in and out, unlike here with a steep staircase, but there was no creative community,” Lisa says. With the space afforded to the family and the support of her fellow entrepreneurial neighbours, Lisa has taken the plunge to open her own business, using her home as her first set of projects.

The live/work unit offers the family plenty of space across four floors

The house is split over four floors. Above the studio is a living room full of bright cushions and mix of mid-century and IKEA furniture, a galley kitchen and a dining area with a statement inky blue wall covered in hexagonal planters that are well out of the way of sticky hands.

“I’m trying to create pockets of calm in my house,” Lisa says. “Any parent finds it stressful with the amount of stuff you have to have: you leave a room for one minute and there’s a toy explosion! But I can put nice things on shelves and it stays just as I left it.”

Lisa’s midcentury-inspired living room is a mixture of high street and vintage pieces

The dining area leads out to decking with an outdoor rug, stylish swing seat and bright orange japonicas in planters. At the top of the house is Lisa and Gordon’s bedroom – the next decorating project – and one floor below are the children’s rooms.

Toddler Harry’s room is painted in soothing greens and browns, with dried eucalyptus and pinecones from their walks in Arnos Vale cemetery turned into simple decorations, and furniture at floor level that makes everything accessible to a child with growing independence. Items are low-cost, DIY or charity shop finds: all feeding into Lisa’s philosophy that attractive homes can be created by anyone with just a little ingenuity.

Six-year-old Evie’s grown up room has space to adapt as her interests change

Six-year-old Evie’s room is Lisa’s masterpiece. Her daughter loves science and maths, so they settled on a space and travel theme. But there are no rockets or globes here: instead, Evie’s favourite ballet pink is toughened up with monochrome framed pictures, a grown-up iridescent ceiling lamp, and fun-loving touches that let Evie’s full personality show through, like glittery blinds and a letter banner proclaiming ‘she loves adventure’.

The modular IKEA furniture, picked out on a mother-daughter trip, can be swapped around as Evie grows up and ditches her big cuddly toys for craft materials.

“Gordon and I both grew up on new-build estates, where there wasn’t the buzz of creativity and industry that living in Paintworks has,” Lisa says. “We say, ‘imagine if we were brought up in a house like this!’”

Find out more about Lisa’s family-oriented and budget-friendly interiors at www.mumdoesdesign.com