The rise and rise of divorce interior design

Carole Annett’s kitchen, with cabinets painted in Cuisse de Nymphe Emue by Edward Bulmer Natural Paints

This Sanderson toile du jouy print was one of Annett’s must-haves

ALEX JAMES

If women are delighted to gain sovereignty over their domestic surroundings, the same goes for their other halves. Martyn Lawrence Bullard, a British interior designer in LA known as the “million dollar decorator”, is interiors guru to Hollywood’s finest, with clients including Cher and Khloé Kardashian. His work, inevitably, involves post-divorce makeovers. “Primarily when we’re doing our projects with a couple it’s a compromise but the final decision comes down to the wife,” he says. “I have done a bunch of divorced men and they really do come out with their own, very different style. I was Pamela Anderson’s wedding present from Kid Rock when they got married [in 2006], when they were married for like three weeks. And then when they divorced I ended up doing the house for him rather than the house for them. We completely changed the vibe because Pam liked things feminine and floral and shabby chic. His newly single pad was very rock’n’roll goes to Bali. I had a piano stencilled with the tattoo on his back and a stripper pole in the living room.”

Martyn Lawrence Bullard describes the post-divorce interiors he created for Kid Rock as “rock’n’roll goes to Bali”

Kid Rock’s grand piano is stencilled with a duplicate of one of his tattoos

“There has usually been a degree of decorating by committee [in the home of a couple], which is never the ideal way to design,” confirms the London-based interior designer Joanna Plant. She believes that an interiors shake-up post-divorce “is a bit like when people cut their hair off. There’s a need to feel like somebody new. It’s all part of putting on a good show, maybe a bit of a brave face.”

However, she does say that her clients who have a young family often choose to preserve the children’s primary home as it was when they split up. “People I’ve worked for have been mindful of wanting their kids to have a feeling of continuity. That sense of stability is key, to the point that even when they’ve left home they want everything to stay the same.” But empty-nesters, with only themselves to consider, what’s on their wish list? “I don’t want to overgeneralise, but the ex-husbands usually want a 100in telly at the foot of the bed. All the things that have been pooh-poohed they get free rein to have.”

Which brings us back to that eternal enigma of what men want. Emma Burns, the MD of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, thinks she knows the answer. The interior designer decorated a corporate financier’s Wimbledon flat when he became single in his fifties. This was his first “own home”, according to Burns, and he requested “comfortable new sofas, without too many cushions, and a mix of modern and old rugs”.

A kitchen/dining room by Emma Burns for a divorced client, with chairs from Oka. The walls are in Studio Green by Farrow & Ball

GAVIN KINGCOME

Burns says that the newly divorced businessman took particular joy in the snug, painted in Baked Cherry by Little Greene, carpeted with a Moroccan rug and lined with his vast library of architecture, literature, history and classics books. “He was delighted. Especially as his red reading room ended up with 11,000 likes on Instagram!”

A makeover is an admirable displacement activity to distract from a broken heart, the garden designer Butter Wakefield says. “There was sadness that felt insurmountable at times … until the dust started to settle and, in my lucky case, it was agreed that I got to stay in our family home.” When funds allowed, the first room she turned her attention to was the bedroom. “I felt I needed to make it mine and mine alone. I removed the rather hectic wallpaper that I once loved and instead chose a calm but warm paint colour for the walls from the Paint & Paper Library called Wattle IV. I chose a lovely natural linen for the curtains and edged them in cream pompoms and hung them from chunky distressed gilt poles. My newly refurbished bedroom offered so much comfort in those early days. It felt so special that I had chosen everything I wanted without putting it to the committee.”

Butter Wakefield’s bedroom is painted in Paint & Paper Library’s Wattle IV

SIMON BROWN

In some cases a splitter will find an off-the-peg habitat that suits them perfectly. The interior designer Daniel Hopwood has recently rented out his parents’ flat in Bayswater, west London, to “a newly divorced older gentleman. My father died a few years back,” he says, “and I renovated it for my mum in her style — cool and kooky and a bit Vivienne Westwood, with Regency furniture and chandeliers. Then, unfortunately, she went into a care home and I thought to myself, this is really specific decor. It’s really tailored around her. The idea of changing it made me sad.”

He wondered if, instead of altering the interior design, he would find a tenant who was the right match for the quirky decoration. “Well, this late-sixties gentleman walked into the flat and nearly collapsed at the knees. He said, this was meant to be! He explained his wife has left him and he had been renting in Notting Hill, living in a flat with white Ikea furniture and magnolia walls. It was a really, sad, soulless place. He walked in here and it instantly felt like a welcoming home to him.”

Still, for some divorced men, the post-break-up pad is less of a sanctuary and more of a lair. “I think the divorced female’s decoration is very, very singular. It’s very much done as an expression of themselves, quite often an expression of freedom,” Bullard says. “The men are absolutely counting on a new partner or partners coming along. They’re decorating for single life. One of the things that they always ask me is how do I make my environment more inviting and more sensual?”

Bullard’s top tip is lighting. “You can have a couple of buttons that are preset to your entertaining mode or your late-night mode. And another thing that I always impress on all my guys is the importance of fragrance. It becomes part of the signature of the space. Some gorgeous sandalwood or mahogany scent. When you’re trying to bring someone new into your life, you want something that pulls them back. If you go in and the place smells like an old sock, no one wants to go back. It doesn’t matter how hot and sexy you are.”