All that glitters - Rousham House

Yesterday Myself and my Boyfriend's family visited a Aston Martin Owners Club meeting and it was situated at the grounds of a very nice house in Rousham, Oxfordshire (I think). In all honesty I don't really care for Astons but I was very interested in the pale stoned house, complete with a little clock tower over in the background. Rousham house is only usually open to appointment, and at £9 a time i'm not sure it is worth it, but on this occasion they kindly opened it free for the visitors.

This house was by no means the nicest or grandest stately home i'd ever seen, but yet the attraction for me was the "livableness" charm of it. The house was large on the outside, but filled with smaller rooms, nooks and crannies with not so steep ceilings. The stairs were also a reasonable size with cute doorways at the top of the landing. Large 17th century portraits hung all over the walls, along with collections of miniature portraits which I don't think cramped the rooms too much, but really played with scale. We weren't supposed to take photographs of the inside, but my boyfriend snook in a few of my favourite room, the entrance hall. I loved this room, the colours refreshed me despite the usually darkness of old homes. There was a slightly off white, mint green colour on the walls which bounced out against the dark brown furniture and oil paints. The floor was a much light, tan type of brown which lifted the deep browns and made the gold frames twinkle and everything was soild wood. I really thought you could take a few bits of inspiration from this quaint British room and make it a livable haven in your own home.

I'm not sure you can get the feel of the colours i felt in this room from the photographs since the light outside was so bright and the inside so dark, so I have made some colours swatches of what I felt. The magenta colour was a pop of colour from a beautiful bouquet of rounded flowers, they took the edge off all the serious paintings.

The 3 bottom pictures are the fabulous outer buildings, including a huge, huge dovecote, some stables and a cute little inbuilt postbox.

I just hope I remember this room when I get my own home.