Set on a quiet road just outside Maidstone, Tania Noble’s home doesn’t immediately hint at the imagination that lies within. Built just twenty years ago and set among a run of similar properties, it was, when Tania first viewed it on a freezing Boxing Day, a rather tired house that had sat empty for two years. “It was very granny!” she laughs. “Cream carpets, magnolia walls… nothing wrong with that style, but it was just not very me.”

Yet where many would have walked away, Tania, a creative antiques dealer and founder of Painted House Kent, a workshop and showroom specialising in reinvented vintage furniture, saw possibility. “I’m used to living in and renovating houses of every era,” she explains. “We’ve moved a lot, renovated a lot. I know instantly what a space can be.”

Within weeks of spotting the property in an auction catalogue, Tania had negotiated the purchase, picked up the keys, and was standing in the hallway with a simple plan: open everything up, drench every room in Little Greene and her collection of French artwork, and create a home built around craftsmanship, style and ease of living.

Tania’s approach to interiors is rooted in her business. Two decades ago, while on maternity leave from a large well-paid corporate position, she bought a £20 chest of drawers from a junk shop, sanded it back, painted it, and unknowingly set herself on a new path. “I didn’t know anything then,” she says. “I just followed instinct. But friends kept saying, ‘that’s lovely, where did you get it?’ So… I just kept on going.”

A summer marked by the 2005 London bombings unexpectedly gave Tania the time and clarity to leave corporate life for good. Realising she needed more knowledge about furniture history and antiques, she took herself off to a wood and antiques course in Scotland to fully understand styles, materials and periods.

Today, Painted House is tucked inside a barn at Tenterden Trout Waters, where Tania runs a small workshop and showroom. Clients come to her for sourced pieces, restored heirlooms, and bespoke commissions. “I hate waste,” she says firmly. “There is so much good furniture out there, lovely pieces of solid wood, and so well made, full of history.

Why buy cheaply made pieces, just to throw them out in five years when they break?” Indeed, it is this ethos which sits at the heart of Tania’s business – to be sustainable, joy-driven and unpretentious – that spills into every corner of her Maidstone home.
Walking through the front door, you land in a hallway, now beautifully panelled in soft neutral tones with bold black accents. A black bordered stair runner (supplied by a long-term favourite of Tania’s, family-run Carpet Mills) sits below crisp off-white walls. A bold black banister gives an immediate clue that this is a house where contrasts are used deliberately, elegantly, and with great confidence.

Originally, the entire downstairs was a series of small, dark rooms. Tania knocked out everything. “I like to cook while people are chatting, have friends sitting at the breakfast bar, music on, lamps on, all open.” The result is a single flowing kitchen/living space, smartly zoned with two bespoke Crittall-style glazed panels that give definition to the space without sacrificing light and flow.
The kitchen itself is a masterclass in clever budgeting: a B&Q carcass, transformed with upgraded handles, luxe appliances, and a beautifully veined copper-flecked tile splashback Tania sourced online after weeks of research.

The worktop is warm, textural wood – softer and more characterful than marble, which she finds “too clinical”. A vivid oil painting of cornflowers, sourced on a buying trip in France, was the starting point for the design scheme. “I knew instantly the kitchen needed to be green because of that painting,” she explains. The cabinetry is a gentle sage; the tones ripple through the space in subtle layers rather than bold statements.

Beyond the breakfast bar, the living area unfolds in earthy pinks, rusts and warm neutrals, anchored by a sumptuous sofa from the Hastings Sofa Company, an East Sussex business Tania adores for its bespoke approach. “I spent three hours in their showroom,” she remembers. “I combined the back of one sofa with the base of another. They were brilliant.” Under foot, Tania has opted for a clever stone effect LVT floor, “which is both stylish and also perfect for the dogs,” she says.

“For me, it’s always the furniture that leads how I decorate a room,” says Tania pointing to a wooden buffet that provided the tonal inspiration for the living space, “It’s my creative springboard and directs what colours I feel a room needs to be.” Large-scale painted art and printed posters continue the palette, beautifully curated across the room’s back wall: a moody still life and expressive figurative pieces, all works that Tania has carried from home to home across the years. “Art is something very special to me.”

Lighting is soft with textured shades and lamps which she has sourced for the Painted House. When she does use overhead lighting in her homes, it is minimal spots in the kitchen (for practicality) and textured chandeliers and pendants from retailers like Next or Pooky, that add glamour without formality.
If the main living space is calm and cohesive, the downstairs cloakroom is pure theatre.

Wrapped in a fantastical Emma Shipley wallpaper of swirling birds and botanical motifs, the room glows with spice-orange tongue-and-groove panelling below the dado and a dramatic gilt French style mirror above the sink. “I love Emma Shipley, I use her fabrics a lot when I am upholstering beds, so I knew I wanted to use her wallpaper somewhere. I wanted this little space to be a real wow moment,” Tania says. “It’s such a tiny room, why not have fun?”
Colour is something that Tania says people must not be afraid of. “I drench every room,” she says as we move upstairs, and she means it quite literally. Walls, ceilings, woodwork: all painted the same colour in each space, creating a cocooning, expansive effect. “People think dark colours make rooms feel smaller. They don’t! White ceilings actually drop the room. Drenching lifts it.”

Across the house Tania has used clever panelling effects, taking simple wood beading which she has applied to the walls and then painted over. Panels are then punctuated by antique artworks, creating a gallery-like transition around the house.
Tania’s own bedroom is serene yet richly atmospheric. “I wanted to have a handpainted mural for years. I finally had the space to do it in here – and I love it! The mural paper is from By Hayleys. It certainly wasn’t cheap but it really makes this room,” she says proudly. Tania has featured the wallpaper around two of the walls, leaving the window wall to be enveloped by long green velvet curtains. The room is bathed in a soft light, and the bed, painted side tables and lamps are all from Painted House. The bed is layered with tactile linens and jewel-toned cushions.

For all the beauty of her home, Tania’s design philosophy is practical at heart. “Nothing here is without function,” she says. “If a piece doesn’t earn its place, if it doesn’t work for the way we live, then it goes. I’m not sentimental about furniture. I love it, but I don’t cling to it. Tania’s customers often come to her with heirloom pieces they feel obligated to keep but don’t like. “I tell them: let’s make it something you do love. You don’t need more stuff; you just need stuff that works for you.” She also rejects the idea that every room needs matching items or single-brand furnishings. “If everything is fighting for attention, a room feels chaotic. Let certain pieces sing, and let others support.”
Though this house has been a joyful project, Tania is already preparing for her next chapter: a move to Fairlight on the East Sussex coast, where she and her husband Graeme are planning a full rebuild. “I love coastal homes with natural woods, big walls for art, relaxed textures.

I want something rustic, elemental and calm.” She references the lodge interiors from the TV show Yellowstone with a grin. “I don’t want coastal clichés, but more that warm, earthy, grounded feeling. Lots of low lighting, no overhead glare. That’s how I want to live.”
“My style evolves all the time,” she says. “Your home should grow with you, not hold you in place. That’s the fun of it.” For now, still in Maidstone, Tania has crafted a home that feels abundant yet disciplined, expressive yet deeply liveable. It is a place of colour, craft, sustainability, and quiet joy – a testament to the belief that beautiful living doesn’t require demolition, newness, or perfection, only imagination with clever and constant reinvention.