So how inspiring to walk into this dwelling, which is a barn converted into a modern living space, more like a cool city loft than a house, a series of flowing, articulated volumes, with different ceiling heights adding interest. It has all the interesting features of a converted building – the beams here are spectacular 300 year-old oak – but no sense of folksiness.

That wasn’t quite the case when Tanya and Richard Johnson bought it two years ago. They were moving back to the UK from Dubai and were all set up with a house in London to buy – but at the last moment it fell through, in that fateful way houses sometimes do. When there is another better house waiting for you…

“We already had our son Jay,” says Richard, “and the new baby, Elle, was imminent, so we needed a home. Tanya is from this area and we heard that the Granary opposite this house was for rent, so we took it – then this came up for sale and we already loved living here, so we jumped at it”

The appeal of the location is very clear. It’s within hiking distance of the famous picnic spot of Box Hill, the highest point in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and one of the National Trust’s top ten best places to picnic in the UK, as featured in Jane Austen’s Emma (where the picnic did not turn out so well for the eponymous heroine, Mr Knightley got very cross…). “In summer it’s twenty minutes’ walk across the fields to Dorking station,” says Richard “and then it’s under an hour to London to Waterloo or Victoria.”

With that cruisy commute and Tanya’s parents nearby, suddenly living in the country made total sense – even for people with glamorous careers in high-end fashion retail (Richard) and the film industry (Tanya).

The challenge was to make their new country home work for their 21st century lifestyle and the sophisticated mid-century style furniture they’d amassed in their big city days, which clearly took some vision. “It was very barn-y,” says Richard. “Not much natural light, lots of stripped new pine and we wanted to bring some of our own personality without detracting from the rural character.”

They immediately painted all the new wood – leaving the magnificent original beams singing out in their glorious natural state – and set about bringing the light. Their first step was to put skylights in the very high ceiling of the sitting room and cement flagstone tiles on the floor, to bounce the newly harvested light around.

They also glazed the entire southfacing back wall of the sitting room with ‘Crittall-style’ windows and French doors, giving them that sought-after ‘inside/outside’ feeling for the summer months. “We used Heritage Windows, rather than Crittall’s,” said Richard. “I’d thought I’d hate myself for not getting the ‘real thing’ but I actually love them. They are set into the floor and fit so beautifully.”

Another standout feature of this space is the large ceiling light fitting, with oversized dimpled glass shades suspended from a reclaimed oak frame, like a puppet’s control bar, which Richard commissioned from a local craftsman to blend with the existing oak. He also sourced, through extensive Google searches, some of the fixtures throughout the house including a black iron leaning industrial bookshelf and the industrial light fittings. The generously sized blue armchairs, from sofa.com, echo the scale, in keeping with the amazing ceiling height.

That created a beautiful light space which greets you through the glazed partition from the entrance hall – the real challenge was then to improve the light in the adjoining dining area, which is in the middle of the house with no windows. They tackled this by making radical changes to the kitchen, which is on the south-facing rear side of the house.

“When we moved in there was just a narrow door in and out,” says Richard, “so we opened that up to a big square space, put in an extra kitchen window over the counters and then more Heritage metal windows and doors, out onto the garden. We also put three Velux in the ceiling so light could really pour in and then penetrate back through the bigger opening into the dining area.”

The utility room’s floor-to-ceiling Shaker-style cupboards are painted matt black, which is very effective – not at all looming and gloomy as you might fear, but very chic and sophisticated with the black and off-white kitchen theme, which has an impressive Rangemaster at the other end.

Leading off from this light and airy space is the children’s playroom, with a comfy sofa, plenty of toy storage and one wall of map of the world wallpaper. “There were double doors into this room,” says Richard, “but we took them out to keep the flow. Now we’re thinking we might put them back to get some peace! We’re going back and forth with that one…”

On the far side of the playroom – out through a second door, back into the dining area, which adds to the lovely sense of flow – is the ground floor guest suite. This generously sized bedroom, with a modern bathroom off it, is painted in Farrow & Ball Skimming Stone, set off by a striking arrangement of framed flower prints over the bed. “They are from the book I owned, called the The Temple of Flora by a botanist of the Regency era, called Robert John Thornton,” says Richard. “I used to get the book out once in a while for a look and it seemed such a waste, so I decided to cut them out and frame them. I hated to do it, but I thought at least they will be seen. En masse I think they work really well.”

The shutters in here – and in all the bedrooms – were already in place when they moved in, but in thirsty-looking dry pine. Painted, they give the rooms a tailored look with a country feel, much better than curtains which could have easily looked twee.

Back out in the dining room again we pause to admire the flowing space once more – “It’s great for entertaining,” says Richard – and the dining table, which they found in West Elm in Dubai, before the American company opened in the UK. The chairs and stools at each end, were a limited edition, also from there.

Back out through the sitting room, up the steps into the entrance hall, at the bottom of the stairs is a vintage Habitat coat stand. This is a trophy from the days, before kids and a demanding job, with a lot of foreign travel, when Richard used to spend weekends browsing for mid-century pieces.

Now his browsing is strictly on Google sitting at the beautiful mid-century desk – from those earlier days – in the airy mezzanine office space on the first floor hall. The print above it is by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, part of a large art collection, some of it by Richard himself, not all of which is yet on the walls. In fact a lot of it is still stored leaning against the wall in the master bedroom.

After the light-filled spaces downstairs this room is a bit of a surprise, having just one small deep-set window in the thick wall, making it dimly lit and giving an idea of how dark the barn would have been before they brought the light in. But in the context it’s not at all gloomy, more calming and nurturing. A cocoon to relax in.

In the children’s rooms there are also shuttered windows with a lovely skylight in Elle’s room giving a bird’s view of the sky. As we make our way back along the hall to the stairs, with me following Richard, I notice him automatically duck his head as we pass under some pretty low-slung original beams. “You learn pretty quickly to avoid them,” he says laughing.

Clearly a few sharp blows to the head were more than worth it to bring up your family in a such a cool space in the middle of glorious countryside.