Cottages

No ordinary restoration project, this previously neglected 18th-century cottage in the Yorkshire Dales has been turned into a living canvas and rural retreat by its artist owner Kitty North and her friend Robin Lucas

The cottage has been gradually reconfigured over the past 30 years by a creative couple to provide a versatile home, cleverly adapted to accommodate their evolving work and family requirements

Ben Pentreath has created a masterclass in mixing colour and pattern at this diminutive early Georgian cottage in Highgate

Returning to decorate a former client's guest cottage, Max Rollitt has filled this house with botanical references that draw on the house's history as a gardener's cottage

With his keen eye for interesting colour combinations, Russell Loughlan has transformed his Deal house into a joyful place to live

On the edge of a Gloucestershire meadow sits a tiny barn filled with varied treasures collected by the antique dealer and designer Christopher Howe.

Leaving London for the Sussex countryside, Anna Phillips and her husband Jeff Kightly transformed this unremarkable Victorian cottage into a characterful family home, painting it in organic, earthy colours and adding texture with salvaged pieces

Taking Rothko's art as her inspiration, artist Sussy Cazalet has turned her coastal house into a colourful delight of reds and pinks

Dorian Bowen’s sensitive restoration of a dilapidated 18^th-century hand-built rural farmstead acts as a living testimony to age-old Welsh architecture and simpler times

Deep in the Mendip Hills, garden designer Sean Pritchard has turned a labourer's dwelling into a charming home

Narrative is everything for stylist and colour consultant Fiona de Lys, whose atmospheric 18th-century cottage in north London has been intuitively decorated with evocative hues, art and antiques that transport her to places from her past

Marin Montagut has something of a cult following for his signature designs, and the Normandy house where he creates them all is testament to his aesthetic

In an idyllic corner of Sussex, Milli Proust and Ted Dwane are pursuing their twin passions of floristry and cider making, growing their own cut flowers and apples in several meadows around their 17th-century cottage

Some eye-catching interior design alchemy by Nadine Finnegan has transformed a charming old Oxfordshire property into a colourful and characterful family home

When Brandon's clients called him in to work on their country cottage, it was a different type of project for the interior designer, who embarked on a pure redecoration without touching any of the architecture, electrics or plumbing of the house. He details the project in his own words.

20 years of owning this fairytale cottage have made it into a beguiling blend of perfectly preserved English tradition and Central Asian colour and pattern

Tasked with combining two 18th-century cottages to create a coherent property, architect Kathryn Manning devised a contemporary extension to join them, while designer Anna Haines introduced a harmonious mix of colours, set off by antique and bespoke furniture

Antiques dealer Adam Bentley took on the 17th-century stone cottage adjoining his childhood home in West Yorkshire almost 20 years ago, sensitively and thoroughly overhauling it before filling it with an ever-changing mix of pieces

With her signature approach to layering and clever use of colour, Lucy Cunningham has injected personality into her idyllic cottage

Having found this tiny cottage in Oxfordshire five years ago, Victoria Barker has reversed the effects of a characterless renovation to create an irresistibly pretty interior