Charlotte Gaisford

After careers working on yachts and in ski lodges, painting airplanes for a Steven Spielberg movie, selling exotic Crafty Computer Papers and creating trompe l’oeil surfaces, Charlotte Gaisford went back to art school. Studying textiles, she discovered a love of printing on fabric and wallpaper, and her expertise devising computer graphics has resulted in unique, creative, custom-printed designs. Prized by decorators in the U.S. and abroad, Happy Times Again, Summer Flowers and China Tea are among Gaisford’s charming bespoke fabric and wallpaper collections. With two grown sons in school, she lives and works in a barn she renovated in the Northumberland, England, community where she grew up, with her husband who is a fence contractor, “a complete opposite from me,” and their dogs, Rosie, Betty, Punch, Frazzle and Sizz. charlottegaisford.co.uk.

What was it like to go back to school as an adult? I was the age of the other students’ mothers and grannies, but I loved every minute. It was four years to be free to create. I had the time to learn so much.

How do you devise your designs? I do lots of sketches—painting, watercolor, pencil—and I can draw on the computer tablet with a pen. The hard part is mathematically calculating it into an image on the computer, but then you can change the color and size and move it around, repeat it. In the old days it was all done by hand. Now with the computer, it’s quicker and you can experiment.

What are the limitations of working on the computer? You don’t see the real colors, it might look good on the monitor but then not so good in a sample. You always have to have a physical reference. You can’t tell what it’s going to look like until you get the actual sample printed.

Which comes first, the color or the pattern? I usually do the pattern until I get to the point where I can use color. Then I do the scale, which is hardest. You want to see what it looks like from a distance, so I do a mock-up, I take photos of a white wall with furniture in front of it and I superimpose a pattern on it. It helps work out the scale to see what works and what doesn’t.

What are you aiming for? You want the colors to balance—to show the pattern as well as possible. In some patterns, the color can look stronger or weaker.

Why do you describe your palette as quite simple? When decorating, people don’t want anything strange color wise, they want something they can live in. Blue, green, red and pink sell. Yellow, purple, orange don’t sell. People like what they can relate to.

But aren’t there color trends? The interior market is much slower than clothing. People choose stuff they can live with, not necessarily the colors they are wearing.

Why do you advocate selecting fabrics before painting a room? Painting first limits your options. You might find a fabric you love that’s not going to go with your blue wall. Find the fabric you love to live with and pick a paint to go with it.

How should you combine fabrics in a room? I have an easy way of doing it. You pick a showstopper fabric—the one I love I’m going to start with—then I choose other fabrics in the same colors, only working within those colors. Put that with a stripe or something that reminds you of a stripe—maybe a line of flowers or something like a dot. If you mix the pattern and scale within the same colors, you can’t go wrong.

Happy Hues (clockwise from top) Sketches are the starting point for Gaisford's designs. Her Stitchery collection fabrics include Knot Tom Tom, Grace Blizzard and Emma Blizzard. More Stitchery fabrics are complemented by Gaisford's Sharanshar red wallpaper.

What should you avoid when mixing colors? Using too much of one color. Frightened people use one color all the way through to stay safe, and when they finish the room, it looks boring.

How do you rescue a room from dead color? One little thing—a bright cushion—can make the whole thing pop.

What is your favorite color? Red. I’ve always liked it, I’m drawn to it. I’m in the Chinese year of the dragon, and the dragon’s head is in my family crest, and it’s my logo.—Sharon King Hoge