Anna Haines’ house greets us with a newly-painted high-gloss Murrey Red front door. It’s a hive of activity: not only is the interior designer’s property being photographed, but two men are sanding down exterior windowsills. “We are doing some ‘touch-ups’,” she smiles. “They were looking tired so I’m enjoying seeing that work being done.”
Once inside the Victorian terraced house, one that we’ve been eyeing on Instagram for some time, it doesn’t disappoint. The lavish, yet relatable space is a perfectly-pieced together mix of old and new, with an abundance of rich, soft furnishings – a fitting showpiece for her classical, joyful, but never overly-curated, approach to interior design.
“When we hand over the home to the client, we don’t want it to look like ‘so-and-so’ has designed it, but like they’ve personally done an amazing job,” she tells us, as we sit at her (satisfyingly familiar) kitchen table for a chat. “What we do is bring all the elements together, so it feels like it’s been done over time.”
Anna and husband Vivian, a solicitor, who she says also
