Some houses are ultimate blank canvases, while others are so entrenched in their architecture that they dictate the design.

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“You walk in, and it feels like a storybook house,” says Beth Dadswell, founder of Imperfect Interiors, of this timber-framed property dating back 500 years in the English countryside.

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Unmistakably Arts and Crafts but overwhelmingly beige, the house practically begged for a personality to match its storied stature. Beth responded in the only way it made sense: she leaned into its bucolic charm and didn’t look back. “Using lots of color and pattern together isn’t always my thing, but the house is so vast, and there were so many rooms that it was the ultimate way to warm it up and inject atmosphere,” she explains.

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The house wore its history proudly—wonky in the best way with creaky floorboards, and crooked corners—but centuries of add-ons left it feeling disjointed. “There are these amazing little wooden openings everywhere,” explains Beth. “The brief was to tie everything together and make it flow.” Because the home’s protected status ruled out any major structural changes and made knocking down walls a nonstarter, she leaned into a different kind of transformation: “I had to get more creative with color and fabric.”

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Luckily, the clients—a couple with four young children—were feeling bold. Beth, a three-time Top 40 Expert, already knew the family well: she’d designed their main home in London and had forged a strong relationship built on trust and a shared creative shorthand. And because this was a weekend retreat, the rules could loosen. “This meant we could make it a little more experiential—not everything had to be super-practical,” she says. Patterned wallpaper became her not-so-secret weapon, with prints by Arts and Crafts pioneer William Morris doing the heavy lifting to banish the beige. In the moody study, wrapped in a bountiful print by Cole & Son, even opening a laptop on a Saturday morning feels almost tempting.

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The kitchen was updated with a wall of zellige tiles for an injection of texture and a simple cabinet refresh in Stewed Plum, a new paint color created by Beth in collaboration with Fenwick & Tilbrook. This project proved a fertile testing ground for the collection, with full-bodied Figgy Pudding used behind the wood burner in the dining room to add depth to what is an otherwise dark space.

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A sense of cohesiveness came through in the details. Beth replaced the mishmash of light switches with elegant bronze styles, then sanded and oiled the wooden floors to let their age and grain shine. Any existing carpet was swapped for sisal: “natural materials are my go-tos,” she says.

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The bedrooms, meanwhile, are so vast they needed a dose of fantasy to feel like destinations rather than empty square footage. Enter half-tester beds: “I sat with each one of the children, and they told me their favorite colors,” Beth remembers. The daughters requested ‘princess beds,’ “but without them being pink and sickly,” which led the designer to twin sleigh beds (a nod to their love of red), crowned with canopies for the youngest. The eldest scored a generous double mattress with a deep purple bedframe. Fruit-themed fabrics tie the rooms back to place: Kent is known for apples and pears, and the garden has its own orchard, so it felt like a natural fit.

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Furnishing the house was a from-scratch endeavor, with Beth scouring vintage shops—both in person and online—for pieces that could have belonged there all along: oak, carved, and quietly timeworn. “Each one was chosen not for its value, but for that ‘lost’ or ‘lived-in’ feeling,” she says. One standout is a painted Mexican chest in the paneled hallway. “The husband is from Mexico, and it felt like a nice tie between the old house and the new owners,” Beth explains. She balanced those finds with smart saves, choosing off-the-shelf armchairs and reupholstering them in premium patterned fabrics and rich velvets.

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The family escapes here from the capital as often as they can, but Beth’s work isn’t finished. With a series of bathrooms and another level still to decorate, the house remains a work in progress. “It’s unfolding,” she says, much like the home itself: slowly, deliberately, and in wonderfully winding chapters.

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