Interior designer Leigh Harmer is all about the web for making contemporary design available to the time-poor. In fact, it's his online store that drives people to his 'bricks and mortar' Fulham showroom, he says. mydeco talks to Harmer about feathers, eye-candy and being a commercially-savvy designer.
My parents forged my interior design career... My father is a property developer so I was mucking around on building sites from the age of six, while my mother had a fashion boutique in the Seventies. So I had the sawdust and cement, and the nice, glam side.
Before I settled in design... I went backpacking around the world for two and a half years, and was subjected to fantastic colours and cultures. Then I came back and got into a publishing company in London. But I got tired of all the greed, and wanted to get back to my creative roots.
I bought my first home... when I was 21. It was an 18th century cottage in Yorkshire and I ripped it apart myself, designed my own furniture, built my own fireplaces and did the whole lighting scheme. I had a very serious head on me and I was quite old before my time.
Good design is a balance of the creative and the logical, he says
The design scene is... very competitive at the moment. You've got IKEA and the rest putting out cheaper products, so unless a design is very tangible in the way it looks, people just won¹t entertain it.
I am most proud of... a cabinet in the flat above the showroom. It is classic-meets-contemporary, with clean lines and some beautiful walnut veneers with cast acrylic handles. It has an elegant stance and just works.
I support...new UK design talent. But so many designers lack commercial reality. They will try and sell a table for £10,000 without realising that they might sell only one a year, but if the table were £1000, they could sell one a week.
The retail/design balance is about... having both the eye candy and the commercial pieces. We might sell one particular design a year, but we cannot survive on that alone. Still, it might be aconversational piece so it's important to have it.
We were the first people... to have the Dutch brand, Mooi?. I go to all the shows to check out the new talent and products and we have a lot of exclusive products because we are very assertive and proactive about getting them here.
My most treasured home posession is... my
Pluma Kubus feather pendant light (£1795), which is a big ball of goose feathers. It is an amazing, unique design that I discovered in Milan four years ago.
I've got a soft spot for... the antique club chair from my parents. I remember they asked me to choose the leather for it, a Scottish hide, when I was about 11. When I left home, I said I would love to have the it and they said, 'it's yours but it's going to cost you'. So I had to buy it off them.
The quickest way to update a room is... paint the walls. I am a great fan of the feature wall as a contrast. And lighting. It's very easy to transform a room just by placing a lamp in a corner.
Mirrors are... an essential part of any interior. They bring in light and if you have a view in the house that you can't see when you walk in, often a cleverly placed mirror helps.
The big trend I've noticed is... The re-emergence of wallpaper. I am not into big, swirly patterns as they date too quickly. I like a block of colour and metallic papers, which work beautifully with lights.
The older I get... the more I seem to be regressing.
mydeco is... a massive leap forward. What has previously taken days and days to visualise has become instantaneous with the 3D rendering tool. It¹s amazing that I can present products to my clients in their own homes and we can play around with product online.
Leigh Harmer products are available to buy through mydeco.
Want to see what your home could look like? Make like Leigh and try out our 3D rendering tool.
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Annie Deakin is a journalist, fashion and furniture expert and editor at mydeco.com and is currently very impressed by the great range of
clocks,
design and
hobs.
