How interior stylist Marianne Cotterill turned her family home into a business
Your home is probably the most expensive thing you will ever buy - but there are ways in which it can help pay for itself, and they don't have to involve Airbnb. When interior stylist Marianne Cotterill and her family moved into their Victorian north London house in 2003, an idea presented itself.
With five children, Cotterill lacked the time and energy for a full-time job, so she decided to put her creative talents to good use and rent the property out as a location for magazine shoots and advertising campaigns. And a house that looks like hers, with its size, period elegance and Cotterill's sense of style, is always in demand, from clients including Vogue, Farrow & Ball and Bottega Veneta.
Cotterill is quick to point out that renting out a location house is not an easy way to make money: "You can't necessarily decorate it in the way you would like, and you have to be OK with people coming in and potentially breaking things," she says. Luckily, she is a serial decorator, and the house has evolved in structure and decor over the years, reflecting her family's changing needs and her shifting tastes.
One of the first things she and her husband, Terry Gallivan, a barrister, did was to remove a wall in the kitchen, opening it up to the dining room to make a spacious living area on the ground floor. They have since knocked through three rooms on the top floor to create a huge living space there.
One might think a house that is regularly used as a canvas would need to be decorated neutrally, but this one is rich with colour, print and details. There is patterned wallpaper by the late Australian designer Florence Broadhurst, and Cotterill is not afraid of strong paint colours such as the hallway's dramatic dark blue-grey. "It looks great, as the room is dark anyway," she says. "Painting dark spaces white just makes them look gloomy."
A period house comes with characterful touches of its own, not all of them welcome. "I don't like having stained glass everywhere, but everyone else seems to love it," says Cotterill. "It's hand-painted, so I'm not about to take a sledgehammer to it."
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Other original features, such as the high ceilings, the plaster mouldings and the way the rooms interconnect, are more to her taste. "Because it's double-fronted, there is always a nice view from one room to the next, so I like to put a favourite artwork or a mirror in a place where it is visible. I have a sofa on one wall that looks across the hallway to the opposite room, and from the sofa I can see a huge mirror I bought from an old restaurant. I often hang paintings in weird places so that I can see them reflected in the mirror when I'm sitting on my sofa."
She is fond of flea markets and reclamation yards, and found much of the furniture and art in the house while out scouting props for styling jobs, or on trips abroad. The tiles on the kitchen floor are from Belgium - she had originally planned on polished concrete, but had a change of heart when a friend told her about a café with an amazing tiled floor that was closing down. The pendant lights, meanwhile, are from a factory in the north of England: Cotterill had to buy 50 to get the three she wanted, and sold the rest to friends.
Some changes, however, haven't worked out: "I took the stair carpet up and painted the stairs recently, and I love what they look like, but now my 14-year-old dog can't use them as she finds it too slippy," she says ruefully. "My daily workout is carrying her up and down continually."
Perhaps one of the advantages to living in a location house is that Cotterill is more aware than most that decoration needn't be permanent, and errors can be rectified. "I am constantly redecorating, so I'm not afraid of change, or of making mistakes," she agrees. "I've just painted my front room pink and I hate it. I'll find another colour next week."
The idea of having a film crew take over your house might seem daunting to some, but for Cotterill, it has become second nature. "The best thing about it is meeting interesting people and being paid for it," she says.
That said, part of her is also looking forward to the day when she and her family have their home to themselves. "I do have some white walls as they are easy to shoot against, but I find them boring," she says. "When I'm done with renting the house out, it will be full of bonkers colour."
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