Cheadle is about twenty minutes from the showroom. The housing is mostly inter-war semi-detached and detached property, with larger houses towards Cheadle Hulme and a scattering of Victorian villas closer to the village.

Houses of that period share a problem worth naming: generous plots and modest rooms. The plot is why so much work here starts with an extension, a loft or a basement, and the rooms are why the result usually needs designing rather than decorating.

The showroom is at York House, Vicarage Lane, Bowdon WA14 3BA, open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm. More about the showroom.

Extensions, basements and the rooms they leave behind

A rear extension solves the kitchen and creates two new problems: a long room that needs lighting as three separate schemes rather than one, and an original front room that has quietly become the least used space in the house. Both are design problems rather than building problems, and both are cheaper to solve at the drawing stage.

Basements are the other Cheadle pattern, and they are almost always phased. Services, ventilation and lighting circuits are set by the first room and have to allow for the last one, or the gym ends up with the wrong power and the cinema with the wrong ceiling.

Inter-war houses and their proportions

Bay windows, picture rails and rooms about four metres across are the standard hand in Cheadle. Curtains want tracks that stack clear of the bay so the daylight is not lost, storage generally has to be built into the alcoves rather than bought as furniture, and a room this size will take one large piece far better than three medium ones.

Where the ceilings are lower than a period house, lighting matters more than colour: several layers at different heights, on separate circuits, so the room works at breakfast and at nine in the evening.

A Cheadle project

Photographs from a Cheadle project, room by room. Read the full case study.

Basement bar with a three-dimensional ceiling panel and a lit wine display
Bar stools at a textured glass bar front lit from behind
Three-dimensional ceiling panel above the basement bar
Wine bottles displayed in a lit wall rack beside the bar
The bar seen along the basement with seating beyond
Sparkly mica wall covering in a basement seating area
Basement seating area with the bar and the television wall
Lounge seating and wine wall in the basement
Smoked glass sliding doors between the basement rooms
Games room with an orange pool table and a backlit gold slate feature wall
The games room feature wall with the television set into backlit panels
Basement bar and seating with the wine wall lit

Rooms we design

Every one of these is designed, supplied and installed for Cheadle houses from the showroom in Bowdon.

Questions we get asked

Do you work on basement conversions?

The interior design, yes: the layout, finishes, joinery and lighting. The excavation and building work is done by your contractor, and it is worth involving us before the first fix rather than after.

Is there a minimum project?

No. A single room is a perfectly normal piece of work, and a design fee of £300 covers one room.

Can you design around furniture we are keeping?

Yes. Bring photographs and measurements of anything staying and the scheme is built around it.

A project in Cheadle

A basement in Cheadle turned into the entertaining floor of the house: a bar, a small kitchen, a cinema room, a games room, a bathroom and a gym, designed room by room over several years.

Interior designer in Cheshire · Home bar design · Home cinemas and media walls · The showroom

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