An Interview With LWE Interiors - finished

LWE I NTE R IOR S An interview with Lorraine Warwick-Ellis.

Out There - Interview Project With thanks to Lorraine Warwick-Ellis for your time and knowledge of your practice.

All images have been taken from the LWE Interiors website.

Designed by Luci Wilson, Keeley Weston and Owain Roberts.

UWE Graphic Design 2020.

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Who are LWE Interiors?

LWE Interiors is a High End residential Interior Design company founded by Lorraine Warwick-Ellis in 2019, an award winning Interior Designer with over 18 years experience in the Interior Design industry.

With numerous years in the High end residential Interiors sector & a passion for Interior Design, Lorraine is fully equipped to offer an expert and knowledgeable approach to each project within the high end residential and Commercial sector, designed and specified to your brief.

Lorraine Warwick-Ellis Founder of LWE Interiors

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How did you get into Interior Design?

Oh, I’ve always done art and I’ve always been art orientated. When I was a lot younger there was no interior design courses or anything like that it was just the case of people doing it for other people. So, there were sort of architectural type things what were going on but I didn’t really want to do architecture, it wasn’t really where I was at. So I got pointed when I was at school to do graphic design and stuff like that, but I did it for a little bit but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. You just know when it’s something you want to do and when it’s not and it wasn’t. It took me quite a while to be honest to find it and I was going to a night school where I had been studying photography for a few years. I decided to have a change of career because that still wasn’t what I wanted to do, I’d been doing it for five years as well and thought this is still not what I want to do. So I was about twenty-seven by the time I actually found what I wanted to do.

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Was it difficult to set up your own business?

Yeah! It took years! I’ve been doing interior design for about eighteen-nineteen years it’ll be this year. I did three years at university, doing the A-honours for it and again it was based as a spacial architecture or spacial interior of architecture and it was a really full on course it was quite an intense one; I think we started off with about thirty joined and by the end of the course there was about sixteen of us left!

It was a really good course, it was really intense and I did really well with it and I was one grade off a distinction!

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What is your favourite style of design?

Oh tricky... I like a few different ones, I like all the Bauhaus stuff and stuff from the sixties.

Bauhaus is timeless, it’s something that you can recycle and put it in modern environments or old environments so I quite like that about the stuff.

I like Christian Liaigre as well his stuff is very good. His design is very simple but very stylish and elegant; you can tell it’s well designed.

I don’t like going crazy with it. We used to work with a woman who used to do all the bling stuff, you know, all the footballers wives stuff, it manages to get it out of you so you don’t want to do it again.

What do you focus on when designing?

It’s the overall look; I tend to design visually so it’s a big help for me if a client wants to pay for the visuals because that’s how I design anyway so I’ll sit and draw the room then I’ll put the objects into the room and see what works and what doesn’t. While doing this I’m hunting through all of the supplier products to see what works and what fits. So I’ve got my auto-cad on for the planning, I’ve got my pen and pencils designing and visualising it all and I’ve got all the suppliers on the computer as well, and I work with these three things at the same time.

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What is your design process?

First thing is to find out what the client’s brief is and find out what they want and what they like. I try to get them to collect some material together so if they’ve seen images or seen magazines that have different interiors in them which they like to then show me when I go to see them. And if they can find palettes that they quite like, different interiors again that show me what they’re getting drawn towards; like if they’re getting drawn towards warm greys or if they’re drawn towards beiges that sort of thing. It gives me an understanding of where they’re at with things.

If they can find a variety of images they like; living rooms or bedrooms, whatever it is and get them to explain to me what they like about that particular room. Because sometimes they’ll pick something out and they just like the light that’s on there rather than the whole thing, or it might be, “oh I like the whole ambience of it all but I particularly like that light but I like the way that the room feels.” It’s to try and get your head round what they want.

From that, I’ll take away what they’ve given me and look at the space and I’ll try to 10

incorporate key things that I’ve picked out during the conversation. I’ll have a look through Pintrest, I go to that quite a lot, I’ve got a massive Pintrest board! It literally had just been around for a couple of months when someone told me about it, and I’ve been on it since then so the boards I’ve got are unbelievable, I’ve just got so many! I had to make some of them private because some other interior designers were going on my Pintrest profile and nicking all of my ideas!

I then put a mood-board together of say the lounge area, I’ll pick out the key things that I think will work in there and present it to the client and see whether they like it or not. I’ve been really lucky and very fortunate to be honest, that I’ve usually got it right more often than not there’s only been one occasion ever - where to be perfectly honest I think she was being deliberately awkward anyway

Do you find that process stressful or enjoyable?

No I love it! It’s one of those things I should have realised many years ago, that that’s what I should have been into because I’ve always been designing things and designing rooms and doing it for friends and family but I didn’t put two and two together. I used to download interior design programmes even though they were awful back then, and I used to sit there for hours and hours - I bought the Sims game to literally build houses. About fourteen years ago, my husband got the racing game Need For Speed and I liked playing it, but when it got too difficult I couldn’t be bothered with it. So I was designing all the cars for him while he was winning all the races!

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How do you present your design concepts? On your website you have lots of sketches, do you do that for every project?

Yeah, once I’ve got it so that I think I’m pretty accurate with what I’m presenting to them, I usually give them the moodboard back and when we got that nailed I go on to do the visual. And when I do the visual I source all the products as well so I’ve got it all together. I don’t do sort of imaginary interiors - meaning that everything is an existing product that I’ve sourced in from somewhere.

I’ll do the visual of that and I’ll do the specifications next to it so they can see what it looks like.

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Would you design something that isn't to your taste if a client asked for it?

That’s a tricky one, because I think I might have a project coming up that might not be to my taste! But I like doing different things though to be fair so sometimes it’s quite nice to do something that’s a little bit different.

The guy’s very very bling so what I’ll do is try to tone it down so it’s not as bling. I think he wants to go full on crushed velvet and crystals and all that stuff so obviously I don’t really want to do that so I’ll try to pull that stuff back a little bit and try do without the crushed velvet and crystals and try to get something else in.

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What has been your favourite project so far, and why?

It’s difficult to say... I quite like all these old Victorian ones but they can be stressful because they’re existing buildings, so you don’t know what you’re going to find and some of the architects plans are way out so you end up with things not working or not fitting. You’ve got to be really careful and go to the rooms beforehand and measure them yourself and double check everything.

I’ve had to do that a couple of times. I quite like all of them because they’re all different; I’m always doing something different, I never duplicate anything, I don’t like duplicating things I want to do something different. Certain clients you might get one where they’re really into old traditional stuff, so that’s quite nice going down that road then you might get another one who’s really into modern luxury things. Every project’s a little bit different so I quite like all of them.

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How do you keep up to date with new interior design trends?

I used to go to the trade shows but for the last year or so I haven’t been because they tend to be the same sort of stuff that comes through all the time. I’ve got magazines that come through and I have a look at them but I think looking at Pintrest and see what’s new on there because I spot a new pin straight away.

After a bit you just kind of know where it’s going to go next because of the products that are available to you and the way they’re set up; it shows you where the trends are going. You might get a couple of very commercial magazines like Elle Design and they’ll put in “oh it’s navy blue walls everywhere with gold”, so you can incorporate that, but people jump on it anyway and that’s what they want and they ask you for it.

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Has your style developed over time?

I’ve definitely changed, like I say I’ve always kept it quite straight and designforward rather than bling-y. When I was working for Dawn Ward everything was ultra bling-y! Everything was crushed velvet and crystals, if in doubt put some crystals on it.

Has Covid effected business at all?

No not at all, if anything I’ve had more enquires because people are at home more and they’re getting fed up with their houses!

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Do you have a team of decorators that you always use?

It depends on the size of the project.

If it’s only a couple of rooms, it would only usually take a week or so if that, so not long at all. If it’s a full house you’re probably looking at three to four months maybe. It depends on the size of the house as well, if you’re getting massive mansions that can take up to a year. Some of them are humongous, we’ve done a footballer’s mansion where he had an entertainment room, swimming pool room... It was like a mini hotel! It had nine bedrooms: all en suite, all individually designed. I had to pick everything: the tiles, the floor coverings,-all the specifications for the showers. You name it, every single detail had to be done. That’s what they expect from you, and to be fair I’d rather do it all because then you know it’s my style and how I want it to be.

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How long does it usually take to complete a project?

It depends on the size of the project.

If it’s only a couple of rooms, it would only usually take a week or so if that, so not long at all. If it’s a full house you’re probably looking at three to four months maybe. It depends on the size of the house as well, if you’re getting massive mansions that can take up to a year.

Some of them are humongous, we’ve done a footballer’s mansion where he had an entertainment room, swimming pool room... It was like a mini hotel! It had nine bedrooms: all en suite, all individually designed. I had to pick everything: the tiles, the floor coverings, all the specifications for the showers. You name it, every single detail had to be done.

That’s what they expect from you, and to be fair I’d rather do it all because then you know it’s my style and how I want it to be.

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Out There 05.11.2020