The Art of the Timeless Home With Alidad

The world-renowned interior designer brings his opulent, richly layered style to Old World palaces and historic homes. But anyone, he says, can create a beautiful space that'll stand the test of time.

Alidad brings a knowledge and love of history to his work, to build layered interiors that look and feel as if they’ve been lived in for centuries—and yet retain modern comforts and functionality. This sitting room in Paris demonstrates his siganture style, combining beauty, warmth, character, and comfort. Courtesy of Alidad

Known internationally by a single name, Alidad is one of the world’s most beloved and recognized home designers. Palaces and mansions around the world, and even historic stately homes in the UK have been breathtakingly brought to life or restored by his careful hand.

Raised in Iran, Alidad is now based in Mayfair, London, and has been recognized in Architectural Digest’s AD100, Elle Décor’s A-List, House and Garden’s Top 100 Interior Designers, and Country Life’s Top 100 Designers. He got his start at Sotheby’s auction house, where he studied art and design and was eventually chosen as the youngest department director in the company’s history. He oversaw the sales of antique Islamic art and textiles until his undeniable love of the fabrics themselves took over and propelled him to become an interior designer.

Alidad at home in London. Courtesy of Alidad

Alidad’s signature look is opulent and maximalist, but his work is highly chameleon, thanks to his talent and desire to make excellent interior design available to all. His more modern “Studio Alidad” is meant to appeal to a younger generation of homeowners, while a new online course on CreateAcademy.com delivers his nearly 40 years of design expertise to an even broader audience. Anyone can design their space using his lessons, he says, from small apartment owners to grand estate stewards, because the building blocks of excellent design are universal and timeless. His course walks you through each step.

Here, Alidad breaks down for The Epoch Times what sets a timeless room apart from merely a nice-looking one, how he goes about achieving that look and feel (and how you can, too), and why the very concept of a home is more important than we might realize.

The Epoch Times: What’s on your mind as you create the textured, traditional living spaces you’re famous for?

Alidad: My aim is to really create rooms that will look as good in 20 years as they do today—what I call timeless rooms. My idea is that with all these stately homes that have been occupied for generations, they’ve been there for 300 years, you visit them and they still feel wonderful. They function, and they’re very cozy and comfortable. They’ve got all the things you need. My aim is really to produce those houses, because it just makes you feel good when you’re in them.

Alidad's projects include the renovation and restoration of prestigious historic houses, such as restoration of The Saloon at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, England, an 18th-century room. Courtesy of Alidad

It’s easier said than done. In order to create a really timeless house, there’s a lot that goes into it to actually make it look as if it’s been there forever, but is relevant for today. It’s completely comfortable, it’s got all the relevant technology in it, but it’s all hidden—it’s quite a task. This is what I like doing.

I’m interested in creating houses where everything’s been thought through—how every room functions, how you go from A to B. When you see a nice room, you might say, “This is nice, it’s lovely,” but the moment you sit down, it doesn’t really function. You don’t know where you put your cup of tea or coffee, it’s awkward, the traffic doesn’t work well. All of these things, unless they’re absolutely thought through properly from the beginning, we'll never get the timeless room or house.

I like what I call a layered look, one that has been layered over generations—different things have been added and taken away. I always say to my clients, “Think of the female line in your family. So your mother did something here, and your grandmother brought the piano from upstairs to downstairs, and your great-grandmother did something else.” It’s all imaginary, but in some of these old 17th-, 18th-century houses, that’s exactly what happened, because different generations of the same family came in and added their own input.

If somebody comes to me and says, “I’ve got an 18th-century house and I want everything in it to be 18th-century,” I say, “No, I can’t do it.” Because that is a museum; that’s not a home. So all my houses have got Georgian 18th-century things, they’ve got Regency things, they’ve got Victorian things, they’ve got Edwardian things. They’ve probably got some Art Deco, bits and pieces.

In this 18th-century London drawing room, an entirely new bookcase blends in seamlessly with the historic paneling. Courtesy of Alidad

The Epoch Times: In your nearly 40 years of being a world-renowned designer, are there certain color combinations or certain patterns you find yourself returning to again and again?

Alidad: My first love is textiles. I was trained at Sotheby’s about antique textiles, and was an expert in antique textiles before I became an interior designer. So my approach is a completely different way of doing things. I was never trained. Nobody told me, “Don’t put this table there” or “you mustn’t put the lamp in there.” But it just happened because I was not afraid of textiles. I was not afraid of old things. I just instinctively started to mix things together.

When I left Sotheby’s, I went back to a lot of those stately houses and started analyzing things. I'd think, “These two fabrics side by side, they don’t go together. But how come it’s OK?” Then I realized that it’s the overall look that has to be OK; you don’t have to match everything together. As long as it’s got a link of some sort within the room, then it’s fine.

The typical call I get from journalists is, “What is the color of today?” Immediately I say, well, I’m not interested in the color of today. Because it’s going to be gone tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, next year. My colors are based on 17th-, 18th-century Italian and French textiles, which will never date. They will never, ever date.

A London breakfast room. Courtesy of Alidad

The Epoch Times: The homes that you work on are often on a grand scale and can take two or three years to complete. How do you begin?

Alidad: I do all the architectural design, as well as interior design. If it’s a newly built concrete house, when the concrete goes up, we take over. In my office, we go from the concrete to the last ashtray. It’s like one vision.

The main thing that is really, really important to understand is that I never have any preconceived ideas when I meet a client. I’m in the business of creating a home that’s just for them and nobody else. It’s one glove that fits one hand. So I need to absorb exactly who they are, how they want to live—but not how they want to live now, how they want to live for the next 20 years.

I sit for quite a while with the clients, absorbing what they want and how they want to live. Are they people who like warm colors, like yellows and greens? Are they people who like cold colors, like blues and pale colors? All this goes into this little sponge in my head—I don’t know where it is, it’s in different places for different people—and it starts forming shapes and colors and things. By the time I’ve talked to them for a few weeks, then I can say, “I think you'd like this color, and I think perhaps this goes with that.” That’s how it starts.

I always say a house has a story to tell. Don’t go against the story of the house, because it‘d be a disaster. If I try to turn a north-facing room into the sunny room that the clients request, it’ll never be a sunny room and they'll always be disappointed by the end of it. It’s better to tell them at the beginning what each room can do. If it’s north-facing, turn it into a dining room, or a study, or a library that can be cozy and dark.

Every house is different. I have to listen to the house, I have to listen to the client, and then the two stories have to merge together before I can do any design for them. That’s why for most clients, when the house is finished and they move in, it’s as if they’ve been there for a long time. Because every inch of the place has been thought through with them along the way.

A gentleman's dressing room in London, designed to exude masculinity. Courtesy of Alidad

The Epoch Times: What would you tell a homeowner who’s unsure of how to design their home in a way that reflects their true personality, but wants to create their personal haven?

Alidad: Fill your house up with the things you like, without worrying too much about it, and then edit it slowly. Follow auctions, look at a lot of books, go to a lot of museums—because the more you see, the more you will know what you really like.

A home, I always say, is the most important thing for everybody. It could be a shack, it could be a palace. Without it, you can’t function. The notion of home is so underrated because we just take it for granted. Interior design has always been the poor sister of fashion, even though it’s so much more important. If you can’t sleep, if you can’t function in some sort of space that you call your home, you can’t really survive.

I always say to my clients, not everything has to be first quality. It’s nice to mix things. If something speaks to you, and it’s not of great quality but it’s got the right scale and the right look, let’s use it, because that’s how you turn it into a home. That’s how you create a home, by mixing different things together—different qualities, different styles, different things.

But the first thing is that you should like everything you’ve got at home. Don’t buy things because so-and-so is buying them and force yourself to believe that you love them. What for? A home is all about you. This is where you actually gain energy; you actually can function when you’re in the right home. When you leave your front door and you’ve got fantastic energy, it’s because that home is giving you that energy.

A lady's dressing room. Courtesy of Alidad

The Epoch Times: You have a course on Create Academy: “How to Create Timeless Interiors with Alidad.” Who did you have in mind when you decided to share your knowledge with the world?

Alidad: I wanted people to understand that the vocabulary of design, whether it’s minimalist, maximalist, or halfway, it’s the same. If they really understand it, the ABCs of design are the same; you just produce different looks.

On the one hand, I wanted it to be for somebody who actually doesn’t have a clue. I wanted to hold their hands. It’s for that person who may have a small house or a small [apartment], and they want to do it themselves because they don’t have the budget to employ somebody. It’s to give them the ABCs of design, how to go about it.

How to choose a color? Just write down what colors you like; don’t think about the house. Am I a yellow person? Am I a blue person? Write down the colors you like, then concentrate on one or two of the main colors. Go to a paint shop, look at the yellows, take three shades of yellow that you like in a small pot, and bring it home. Just paint it on a piece of paper or cardboard, put it on the wall. It’s literally step by step.

At the same time, I wanted to hold the hands of designers, too, because there are sections that relate to them. Mathematics has given me a sort of logical way of going about things, and that’s what I’ve applied in this course. It’s an all-rounder.

A dramatic ceiling for an octagonal library has layers that both hide the lighting and air conditioning and provide myriad surfaces to decorate with hand-printed and -painted papers, brass, and gilt work. Courtesy of Alidad

Interior design brings out the worst in people. No matter how sophisticated you are, no matter how many houses you’ve done, it still brings out a lot of insecurities because you’re exposing yourself to the world. Whoever comes to see your house, they’re going to say, “Oh, they chose that fabric. They chose the shape of this.” So there’s a sort of hand-holding throughout the course, saying, “It’s OK to feel like this, it’s OK if you went and looked at something and you didn’t get anywhere, it’s OK. There is tomorrow.”

The Epoch Times: You seem to genuinely want to have a conversation about design with everyone, not only your clients who have castles, palaces, or mansions.

Alidad: That’s my passion. Yes, I want to share, I want to share all the things I know. But it doesn’t have to be as complicated as what I do. You can do a beautiful home with simple things.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.