Nina Campbell on the Joy of Odd Furniture

There are no rules when it comes to furniture, but how you think about a room first and foremost should be about your guests: where are they going to sit when they arrive and how are they going to use that room?

The trouble in a sitting room is that you can slip into that rather boring layout of a sofa with two chairs either side of the fireplace.

But if you do that, perhaps the chairs shouldn’t be a pair or they could be matching, but in different fabrics so it doesn’t look too cookie cutter. With this layout in my Chelsea townhouse, I realised I wasn’t getting enough people into a rather small area, so I put in a corner banquette of slightly higher seats. I like playing cards and this works well when you bring up a card table and two chairs, but also for people who like a firmer seat, rather than sinking into a sofa and finding themselves falling asleep after dinner. I think you need a mix.

Image credit: Create Academy

Unless a dining room table practically dances, it wouldn’t be perfect.

It’s a complicated thing to get right. Mine is a long, almost trestle table that I bought from Talisman — a room usually dictates what can happen with furniture. If we’re only three we can have one at the end with two either side but I’ve had 14 if I bring up what I call my party chairs, which we sell in Perspex so they disappear into the room. Because the table is narrow, you can talk across it, which I’m sure Emily Post [the American socialite and etiquette expert] would think is outrageous, but that rule of talking to one side and then the other is gone. If you’re hosting dinner you have to make sure that nobody is left out.

Image credit: Simon Brown

The most important thing in a guest room is to have a luggage rack, a table with a lamp so that they can sit and read and sometimes I put a single chair in so that if they do want to sling their clothes on something rather than hanging them up, they can go on that rather than on the armchair, which obliterates the possibility of sitting down.

Image credit: Dan Ball - Nina Campbell Ltd

Image credit: Paul Raeside

In the 1960s when I was lucky enough to work for both Imogen Taylor [the principal decorator of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler] and John Fowler, you tended to do houses for people who already had furniture. You were re-covering or possibly upholstering, it wasn’t a question of going to a catalogue and choosing everything new. What’s fun is having to work it out. Perhaps you have a sofa that’s a bit different, and you have to figure out how to make it work.

There’s something rather nice about having odd furniture, and if you are starting from the scratch you don’t want it to look like you’ve bought it all in one go.

I have pieces that have travelled with me from house to house, including a pair of brass sconces that I got from Guinevere Antiques, and I even built a wall in one house to accommodate them. I wouldn’t be without them and they seem to work wherever they go. The slight shame in London is that a lot of the antique dealers have closed down. What I like doing with clients is going around places like The Decorative Antiques Fair in Battersea and picking up quirky odd bits that you throw in. The inspiration behind my ready to ship collections – where each piece is named after my children, grandchildren and now the dogs – often comes from when I’m antiquing, or it’s things that I’ve lived with and just can’t find anymore. The Isabella Chair is a good example, and perfect for either side of the fire, because it holds you high in the back. It’s not one of those dingy little chairs that you dread being left on. Or there’s the Grace End Table which is a jolly useful little table that’s not too low to put your drink down, so doesn’t feel clunky to use.

When it comes to upholstery, I tend to think that the sofa should be in a vaguely neutral fabric if possible – something like the Farnaz Stripe in our latest fabric collection – because you can always change the cushions about and it’s much cheaper to change a chair than a sofa. I think one has to keep a rather practical head when it comes to furniture.