Desig House: At Home: a stylish Cotswolds barn conversion

In this converted Cotswolds barn, designer Pippa Paton has combined modern __design with natural materials to create a minimalist haven that maintains its rural identity

A set of wooden skittles suspended from the ceiling is not a centrepiece that you would expect to greet you upon arriving at a house in the Cotswolds' Windrush Valley. From the outside, the converted barn fits right in with its idyllic village setting, but on entering, its one-off features begin to reveal themselves in turn.

Said skittles, which date from the nineteenth century and were used by Man Ray as props in his photographs in the Twenties, have been placed by the interior designer Pippa Paton in a chandelier frame of her own __design and set by an artisan blacksmith. Light strikes each skittle to cast a long shadow onto the surrounding walls. During winter evenings and on dark nights, this transforms the hall, with its chestnut-coloured barn doors, inky black stone floor and contemporary, industrial-style pressed-steel staircase, into something akin to an immersive installation. An iron grid mirror, framed by an old industrial window, counterbalances the staircase opposite. Meanwhile, two ancient-looking earthenware pots that are mounted on white plinths draw the eye through to the welcoming dining room. This is reached by crossing a deep-piled rug that echoes the hues of Peter White's landscape hanging on the stair wall.

The owners, who work in London and have grown-up children, tasked Pippa with creating a minimalist haven in a nineteenth-century barn. One challenge she faced was that it had been previously converted from barn to house using an unfortunate predominance of pine. The second - more welcome - challenge was the instruction by the owners that anything newly brought in should fit in with the building's former agricultural life. Through materials, references and previous functions, all the features Pippa has introduced are in keeping with their new home's history and the region's rural identity. They also, by no coincidence, sit seamlessly within the owners' collection of sculptures, ceramics, antiques and natural ephemera.

Pippa's trick is to set textured treasures in a pared-back context. Modern white sofas in the sitting room, off the entrance hall, contribute to a sleek impression (some feat in an inherently rustic building) and frame a large piece of nineteenth-century wooden threshing machinery inset with flint stone teeth, which Pippa encased in a custom-made glass coffee table at the owners' request. An off-white rug, white Chase Erwin curtains, Lucas Ferreira abstracts and a Guy Stevens stone sculpture continue the monochrome framing effect. The blanched look dissipates when you are sitting on the sofa, as it faces an exterior wall of exposed golden Cotswold stone, where a miniature triangular window sweetly remains from the barn's original design. Tan leather lounge chairs bridge the gap between minimal and natural.

This dual quality is Pippa's triumph here, where the mental clutter of the working week is encouraged to fade away. The designer explains, however, that even the owners' London home has everything tucked away out of sight in clever storage.

The work on the barn took Pippa a year to complete, finishing in November 2015. Beyond the dining room, the family room's grey sofas are offset by some of the barn's few bright accents in the form of lacquered coffee tables and velvet cushions. As Pippa explains, 'I tend to stick to a similar palette so the eye perceives the harmony of a whole space, but in here we did something fun that works against the neutral background.' Painting all the wood-beamed ceilings downstairs white added a sense of height and brought in continuity throughout, including in the Bulthaup kitchen, which was in place before Pippa arrived.

Upstairs, the double height main bedroom holds a bed made from a single tree that grew nearby. Above the bed hovers a mezzanine bathroom with glass walls that allow the eye to pass from the bed up to the roof 's highest beams and from the shower in this bathroom out through the window across the picturesque valley. The Dornbracht shower called on Pippa's design team's most innovative problem-solving skills, as they had to figure out how to get water into a ceiling-piped fitting when in place of a ceiling, there was a pitched roof metres up. They designed a wall-mounted water piping solution encased behind the shower's back wall. The facing wall is a restored stable door. William Holland's burnished copper bathtub and matching hand basin add luxurious touches and bounce light around. Multiple switches control the discreet spotlights for different moods.

The overall effect of the interiors is one of hush; a muted palette means star pieces can shine even when of the simplest material and design. The abundance of wood and stone, in the downstairs rooms especially, makes for an unpretentious ambience that belies the high-end design work behind its exacting composition.

Pippa Paton Design: pippapatondesign.co.uk