Home Truths: An upstairs downstairs family

Cheryl Markosky meets Wayne Hemingway, fashion designer turned interiors guru

Wayne Hemingway is currently consultant to Top Man and, with his wife Gerardine, designer of a Wimpey development in Gateshead, which is officially launched tomorrow. He and Gerardine live near Chichester with their four children, aged from five to 16.

We knocked down a funny little Thi-ties bungalow that was a bit weird and Gerardine designed our new house from scratch. She dedicated a long time to it – about 16 months – and we lived on site in a little place behind the house as it was being built and moved in about four and a half years ago. It was built with family life totally in mind. The best thing I have ever done is get married and have kids. No matter how good your latest project is, it is great to come home.

"The first thing is to decide how a house should work, rather than what it looks like. This has been our philosophy on everything. If you get it right in the beginning, then the aesthetics can follow later. If you worry about the aesthetics first, that is a bit sad in my opinion. We sat round as a family and worked out what we wanted; the kids really invested in this house. When you have four kids it is different – the whole thing becomes very open-plan.

"We are lucky that we are near the coast and have three and a half acres, overlooking mature woodland, grass and the sea. We wanted to make use of this, so the living room is upstairs where you get the best of light and views. The structural engineer didn't agree with us, but we have 2,500 square feet of totally open space.

"The house looks industrial with girders and 20ft-high ceilings. The kids at school would tease our lot by saying, 'Your mum and dad are building a squash court or a factory.' But all the kids love it. There is a big table tennis table and all along one wall is a bank of computers. A huge climbing wall runs right up to the roof – it looks like a piece of art. It can end up like a riot, with our 16-year-old in the corner on headphones, the little one and his mates on the climbing wall and someone cooking a meal, all in the same space. There are desks in the kids' rooms too, if they want some quiet and for when GCSE time comes round for the older ones.

"People said, 'You won't like sleeping downstairs,' but it is terrific. Downstairs we have glass on one wall, no curtains and hidden blinds. It is nice looking out at the stars at night and waking up to the sun. No one finds it frightening. Only one child has chosen to use the blinds. Research from America shows that children who get more natural light do 20 per cent better in exams. It makes sense that we gravitate towards natural light. The problem is that Government sustainability legislation asks for smaller windows in new buildings so there is less heat lost, but there are other ways to achieve this. We have two massive sofas that are four metres long that we made from an old wooden fishing boat that a friend wrecked on the way to the Isle of Wight. We like re-using things. The table, which seats 10, is an old boardroom table from an office building. The rest of the furniture was designed by Gerardine and made by local carpenters. We get a lot of things from car-boot sales that are cool "proper" pieces. We got Seventies swivel chairs from a posh reception area in an office and had them recovered in Harris tweed. The Danish harp chairs came from a friend who deals in period furniture. Several multi-coloured boards cut to different sizes hang on the wall. They are really acoustic panels covered in material that look like giant paintings, but absorb the noise. We have used our own wallpaper range from Graham & Brown, which is only £14.99 a roll. I always felt uncomfortable with the idea of being wealthy and a celebrity. It is really very easy to design expensive stuff. It's much more of a challenge to do something cheaper.

"I think people get too obsessed with worrying about fashion trends. They think they have to change everything, but things don't move that fast. Magazines want change, so they can sell advertising. But home is really about being comfortable, taking your shoes off and escaping from worry. The idea has to fit who you are and how you live.

"We haven't formally trained, but we work with architects and like to keep things simple and human. I don't like futurism just for the sake of it. We translate what works well in our home into the Gateshead project, like we do mini-versions of the landscaping. You might not get 20-foot ceilings, but we do the best we can for the money.

"I don't like the way that large tracts of land are bought up by posh house builders who leave it empty until they have sold off their expensive apartments. Then they start on the next development for the next set of rich people. Why are they building things just for yuppies? You can build affordable homes for a more mixed society."

Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is a 700-home development on the site of the former Gateshead Garden Festival ground. It is being marketed by Chesterton Residential