Drawing on a mix of comfort and grandeur

Do you know your pelmet from your parquet? Robert O'Byrne is here to help with a new series on how to decorate

Do you know your pelmet from your parquet? Robert O'Byrneis here to help with a new series on how to decorate. This week Isabel Morton's shares the secrets of her drawingroom.

Traditionally any decent-sized Irish home used to include something called The Front Room. The capital letters are important here, because one of the characteristics of The Front Room was that it wasn't used on a daily basis but saved for Very Special Occasions. Like when the parish priest deigned to call, or when one of the family married, or a funeral took place. Then The Front Room - full of over-polished and under-used furniture - would briefly come into its own prior to the dustcovers being put back on and the door shut until the next Very Special Occasion arose.

Today's homes rarely contain a Front Room, but instead a lot of them have a drawingroom and all too often this suffers from being granted a similarly sanctified status. And that really oughtn't to be the case, because while the nature of a drawingroom is quite different from that of the family room - less cosily shabby, less informal, less accessible to pets, children and anyone else unaware of the value of good porcelain - it should still offer a warm welcome.

Even if not in regular use, the drawingroom must be inviting and comfortable, which is certainly the case in decorator Isabel Morton's Co Dublin home.

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The mid-19th century house comes replete with high ceilings (rising some four metres) and solid plaster cornices, so Morton started with certain advantages when she and her family moved in seven years ago. But she still had to do a lot of work to do before her drawingroom - actually two interconnecting rooms running from easterly front to west-facing rear of house - achieved its present allure.

"I hate things looking too tidy and new," she says. "And everything matching is too exhausting."

Nevertheless there's an understated co-ordination about her drawingroom: nothing too obvious but it's clear some thought has been put into making sure the diverse range of sofas and French fauteuils and bergères complement one another, as do the fabrics in which they're upholstered.

As if the room doesn't already benefit from sufficient light from the large bay window to the front and the adjacent south-facing conservatory, the walls are in a warm shade of honey-toned yellow, as are the heavily fringed and tasselled damask curtains hanging from gilded rods. These are the kind of details that merit a little extra expenditure, as a way of setting the drawingroom apart from anywhere else in the house.

And that expenditure really can be quite modest. One reason why Morton's approach to her drawingroom works is because she knows not to over-gild the setting; not to have everything too smart or shiny or new.

Scattered about the room are handsome, solid pieces of Irish mahogany furniture - a fine big Regency chaise, a couple of side tables - but kept in moderation.

The pictures decorating the drawingroom are equally diverse, some old, some new, most of them picked up at auction. The doors are especially fine and may be 18th century; Morton's research leads her to believe these came from a house in Merrion Square and were cut down to fit the room. The old pitch-pine floorboards, covered by parquet in the 1920s, have now been restored although, once again, not buffed up to an intimidatingly high sheen. The only things over them today are a few Persian rugs, relatively inexpensive versions of old styles.

Sadly the original fireplaces had gone so Morton had the white marble pair made. And they're in working order; nothing so easily makes even the grandest room inviting than a decent fire.

Another trick is to keep the lighting low, both in wattage and height, to soften the overall effect.

Although the two adjoining rooms are hung with the same fine chandeliers, quite correctly they're rarely switched on, with a profusion of lamps instead. Notable absences from the room are television sets, a computer and other modern technology. They'd be out of place in this setting and detrimentally affect the drawingroom's ambience.

"You can't really have a room like this unless you've also got a family room where all that stuff can go," Morton says.

So how often can she and her family be found in their handsome drawingroom? "Not as often as I'd like," she admits. "Mostly it's when we're entertaining - or when I want a bit of peace." Maybe not so different from The Front Room after all.

Drawingroom: key elements

1A warm, inviting colour scheme; nothing chilly or off-putting

2Comfortable seating, and plenty of it

3Furnishings that complement each other rather than everything strictly matching

4Soft lighting

5Touches of grandeur - a good gilt-framed mirror, rich fabric for the curtains, a couple of decent antiques

6No television