Mary Dixon uses two sets of curtains to ensure a warm home.

Mary Dixon’s winter

Interior designer, Mary Dixon, has plenty of heart and hearth-warming tricks of the trade she uses to ensure her home is a cosy and pleasing place to be during the winter months.

“Planning for winter is very much about creating warmth in a room and lighting candles is one of the easiest and most effective ways to create atmosphere,” says Mary, who with her husband David, owns John Dixon Antiques in Remuera.

Creating soft pools of light with standard and table lamps is another of her winter-mood essentials. Mary, who isn’t fond of harsh halogen spots dotting a ceiling, prefers to use a variety of different lighting options at different levels to illuminate a room and create atmosphere. 

The Dixon sitting room has a different arrangement of furniture during summer and winter. A small sofa is placed in front of the fireplace in the warmer months, and when the weather turns cold the sofa is moved to the other side of the room, in front of French doors, which are seldom used during winter. Then the roaring fires can begin.

Many homes in the Northern Hemisphere have double and even triple sets of curtains, but that concept isn’t very common in New Zealand. “The seasons are much more defined in Europe and the UK, where effective window coverings hold much more importance.”   

Using lighting at different levels creates a warm and interesting room for winter.

When Mary and husband David bought their Remuera house in 1984, they inherited cream slub linen curtains attached under pelmets, which have stayed to this day. Mary had extra curtains made from exquisite linen from the English company Schumacher. They hang from the ceiling, dropping full length to the floor with the effect increasing the sense of height in the dining and sitting rooms. 

“This configuration works perfectly. If we want to control the glare in summer, we simply close the linen curtains, and in the winter we can close both for extra warmth.”

Lined with the thickest bumph Mary could find, these curtains ensure warmth from the fire has no escape.

Mary likes to use colour in her house and in her sitting room, Fowler Pink is a warm and dusky shade. It is named after John Fowler, one of the founders of the very successful company that is Colefax & Fowler.  

Different materials are ideal for forming layers of textural interest in a room and in winter, Mary’s possum throw really comes into its own. What’s more, there’s nothing like warm-toned spirits such as sherry and whiskey gleaming through cut glass decanters to really warm the heart.