MY SPACE:Designer Neville Knott's apartment in south Dublin has a combination of modern pieces and antiques, writes EMMA CULLINAN.

Neville Knott is an interior designer, television presenter, head of colour for Crown Paints and the programme co-ordinator for the honours BA in interior and furniture design at DIT. He lives in a 1970s apartment in Dalkey.

Why did you buy this apartment?

I bought it because it was established and I didn’t want to conform to the fashion for a brand newbuild or penthouse that people would perhaps box me into. I wanted to go for quality and be by the sea.

When I came to view the apartment, people sitting on their balconies said, ‘hello, how are you?’. Everybody was incredibly friendly and I could see that there was an established community. I could tell they were people I could live around and that was important.

And were you right?

That hunch was bang on. I have the best neighbour ever above me and good friends of mine bought the apartment opposite. Even the property manager is incredible.

I moved in on the first day of the Millennium. On New Year’s eve I went to a party in town and made the mistake of telling everyone that there would be a housewarming party at my place the following night. I woke up and thought, ‘oh my goodness, all these people coming and not a shop in the country open’. I found a Spar somewhere – Rathmines I think – and bought Bird’s Eye chicken breasts and wine and then whacked some mussels off the rocks on the seashore. The party went on until 6am.

Have you always lived in Dublin?

I got my first apartment here in the 1980s. I come from Boyle, Roscommon, and it was strange because if you don’t come from a city it is all quite open to you – although I had been to boarding school in Wesley, when it was still outside the city and set in fields and forests.

I viewed a little apartment in Monkstown, where I have never been before. It was in the Old Hall School. Outside every door of all the beautiful old homes by the sea in Monkstown were all these bells because they were all flats. It was very much an area for artists and novelists.

Over the 10 years that I was there all the houses on the seafront were restored to their former glory and you could see walls – where original drawingrooms had been divided into three rooms – coming down and chandeliers going up.

We never thought that these homes would be converted back. Turn-of-the-century houses had been let go as people wanted to live in small newbuilds. People were going on holidays and seeing Spanish adobe houses and building them here – they didn’t want some big, cold Georgian pile around them.

But suddenly they became fashionable again. At the end of the 1980s Laura Ashley matching borders and fabrics began to be sold here. We had never seen anything like that before. Families began going around Dublin seeing showhouses to get ideas. Before that Ireland had furniture and hardware shops in every town which all sold the same wallpaper and carpets.

A lot of us grew up with beiges, browns and oranges. We never really saw classic wallpaper and borders and how they should be used. Then suddenly there was a mania for bringing back the classic style of room and that whole co-ordination thing came in.

How did you end up doing interior design?

I did store design and display in Switzers and was part of the Christmas window design team.

Working at Switzers was brilliant and three of my closest friends there are still my closest friends 20 years later. In Switzers and later Brown Thomas we created these instant interiors in the windows – some the size of regular rooms – every week or two and realised that these big interior statements attract people’s attention. I then studied environmental design, began to lecture on display in DIT and did a BA there.

I bought the Monkstown apartment when I was at Switzers and did it up with paint effects.

It sounds terrible now, although it was all the rage then, and I used to think it was amazing. I specialised in paint effects at work. I couldn’t afford to recarpet or a new kitchen and bathroom so paint effects were everything.

Did you have to do much to this apartment after you bought it?

Yes, because the walls were stippled and there was old pink carpet on the floor. I didn’t show the apartment to my parents or friends because they would think I was nuts. A few years ago another apartment was for sale, in the state mine was in when I bought it, so I took my parents in there and said, “this is what my apartment looked like”, and they said “thank God you didn’t show us because we would have thought you had really lost the plot”.

I wanted to create a blank canvas and had the hallway walls panelled and put in limestone floors. That was nine years ago when such floors had just started to go into high-end retail stores. I went to a company and asked for solid Italian limestone and the woman in the shop said “you don’t want to put stone down in your home”. But this floor has seen many, many, many great evenings. So it’s lasted and is still stylish.

There used to be a wall between the livingroom and kitchen/diningroom and when that was opened up there was such a feeling of space.

You mix all sorts of things in a dramatic but cool way

My parents collect antiques so I’ve always had a soft spot for them. The trick is incorporating them with modern elements and that gets easier as you get older. Design and people evolve at the same time.

I designed a Spanish limestone fireplace with an asymmetric curve, like a big frame, and followed it with the dropped ceiling above it. I bought the painting beside it in a house auction in Killiney. It’s a fantastic original piece that needs space to breathe.

The old screen in leather, gild and glass was an old drawingroom screen for a Monkstown house. I went to an auction of contents and also got a great set of prints – the Cries of London– which I have arranged together so that they become more architectural. I pulled out the wall they are on and put lighting in behind it.

The classical columns by the door came from Switzers. When the old Wedgewood rooms were being demolished, I salvaged them. They bring back nice memories for me.

The suite and chair are French art nouveau. I love the fact that they are original. I don’t like over restoring things because then they become like reproductions, although if the original fabric has gone I recover things.

I got another picture from a student in fine art who found a bag of letters by a bin in a station. It is made up of tiny snippets of letters which include leaving cert results and, incredibly, Switzers headed notepaper.

You’ve developed paint ranges – what colour do you have here?

It is a strong cream called Crème Fresh from my Crown colour collection a few years ago.

I love duck eggs because you can put darker furniture with them. My kitchen is duck egg green and all the lighting in the apartment can change colours, which is great for creating different moods.

Why are people often scared of paint colour?

Everywhere I go the one question asked is what colour should I paint my bedroom wall, and so on. As a result all paint manufacturers have collections in which they have brought colours down to a few on a card, with safe zones. You can’t go too far wrong with these.

Problems arise with whites or creams with tints of blue, pink or green in them. If someone has a cream carpet with a tint of yellow, curtains with a tint of green and think it will all come beautifully together with a ‘cream’ paint that actually has a tint of blue in it then you get this subtle train wreck.

I think people feel foolish when they make mistakes so I wanted to bring out a designer collection with soft and subtle tones – all these wonderful coastal tones which I love – and deeper richer mochas, taupes, stones, golds, greys and duck eggs which are meant to make life easier.

You’ve been brave with this interior

That’s what I do. I love to play around with space and I shift clients’ walls around. I’m so lucky to have had some amazing clients although nobody ever knows who I am working for.

So you’ve had famous clients?

Yeah, yeah – maybe.

This is very much a socialising home as well as a personal one Yes, with this room I wanted to have a social space where loads of people could come in and find their own zone. And it works: when people come here a group will pull a chair or two over by the window seat with a radiator under it that makes it cosy; and another group will gather at the other window seat in the diningroom. They all zone-off.

This house shows my life and how I’ve evolved over my adult years.

I’ve collected bits and pieces – the glasses or china or whatever – everything has a little story, it’s been bought on a particular day or with a friend or something’s happened and that’s nice to have. This apartment didn’t just arrive.