Me And My Home: A touch of glass in SW8

Caroline Wingfield talks to designer Susan Hirsh about Warhol and Stockwell

Susan Hirsh co-runs the bespoke conservatory and home accessories company Marston & Langinger with her partner Peter Marston

I t's a bit of a Tardis, this house. It looks quite small from the outside but once you get in, it's surprisingly large. It's a Regency house and we were very attracted by the lovely windows and the corner position on a terrace. All the other houses have the door in the middle and rooms either side of the hall but this doesn't and it gave us a lot more scope. We bought it in a great hurry. I think we had a couple of days to find a house and it didn't have enough bedrooms, but my partner Peter has seen to it that it now does. He's a real fixer of houses. He works out exactly what he's going to do and always gets it right.

"This area of south London felt very edgy when we moved here in 1995 and we loved that, but Stockwell has become a bit gentrified now. We chose the location because it was near to the children's school in Pimlico, Peter's office in Westminster and our shop in Chelsea. It was very cheap to buy here 20 years ago, but now it's become very expensive. But there's still an interesting mix of people.

"Downstairs, the kitchen is all open shelves, which I think is much easier than constantly looking in cupboards. If you were a minimalist this would be hell, but I find it's a very easy kitchen in which to work. When we moved in, we had three children living with us and it's a good working family kitchen. We found the sink in an architectural reclamation yard. I was very interested when we went to see Monet's house in Giverny that his kitchen had a sink exactly the same.

"The kitchen leads through to the conservatory, which is now our dining room. There's a real sense of being outside in the garden which is just fabulous. We extended the paving, with York stone on the kitchen floor and antique York stone outside. In the summer it's wonderful, full of exotic tropical plants, but if we had a really bad winter we'd probably lose quite a lot of the plants. Some of the plants and trees were here when we moved in which set the tone, but they've grown incredibly. There's no lawn – that's very important as I'd rather just sweep than mow. We do travel a lot, but I don't believe in bringing other countries home – I'm not trying to recreate another country here. I wouldn't want a Japanese garden in Stockwell.

"The whole house is a testament to product development. Colour is my background; in the Seventies I worked for colour forecasters in the fashion industry, so you could sayI'm a sort of I'm a paint evangelist. We've found an acrylic paint that can be used on wood outdoors that will last 10 years before it needs repainting. We now also do wall paints and I've been tweaking the colours from our original line of only eight.

"There's a lot of colour in our bedroom but we live in a neutral shell – the colour comes from what we put on the walls. The room isn't white, it's two colours from our range: Portland and Candle. At the point where the wall meets the woodwork, you can see that the wall has got a hint of green in it and the door pink. It's absolutely wonderful to lie down and look at the light as it changes throughout the day.

"I like big pictures. The two Warhols of Mao I have hanging above the stairs, for example, make a big grand statement; the use of colour and the iconic imagery. On the other hand I like to get a collection of pictures and hang them all together to make an impact. I hate bitty things.

"I'm thinking about scale a lot at the moment, and I like not having everything the size you expect it to be. It's nice to have a really big light, or a really big picture: the minute it's up there it looks right. We have a conservatory at the shop and I've put a huge 18-candle chandelier in it and it fills the whole room. It's very dramatic – I want people to come in and say, 'yes, I can see that will work'.

"We always end up buying interesting things on our travels. I've got a background in textile design and I look for handicrafts and weaving wherever we go. Last year we went to Laos and Vietnam, right in the north towards the Chinese border. The Hill tribes are the most stylish people you've ever seen. We bought a lot of fabrics in Laos. If it's really fantastic craftsmanship then it's lovely to own it. At the moment I'm particularly keen on the idea of pattern on pattern. In our bedroom we have Ghanaian kente cloths, kuba cloths from South Africa, stripey cushions from Morocco and a rug from Iran.

"I also collect things and I like to display what I have rather than keep them tucked away. I found some discarded dolls and wanted to give them a home. I've put them in individual boxes and they're up on the wall. I think people find them a bit spooky. I just thought they were absolutely charming.

"This house works – everything works – so you can go away and just leave it and when you come back it's all functioning. We've got it right over time. My relationship with Peter is like this: he fixes the architecture, I colour it and we furnish it together. We've become quite a good team."

Marston & Langinger, 192 Ebury Street, SW1 (020-7881 5717) www.marston-and-langinger.com is celebrating its 20th year at this year's Chelsea Flower Show with a glass Pavilion of Calm (stand MA18)