Pauline Bunting isn’t afraid of using bold pink, green and turquoise paint shades on the walls of her home, High Barton, at Watermillock overlooking Ullswater. “If it’s wrong, all you’ve got to do is buy a can of white paint. It’s not rocket science - if you try it and you don’t like it, you can change it.” Pauline says it’s possible to pair up any two colours providing you select the right shades: “You can put any colours together, the only thing is you’ve got to have a balance.” Pauline’s love of colour is seen throughout the four-bedroom home which she had built in an elevated setting overlooking the lake and the fells beyond. Visitors and Airbnb guests find brightly painted walls, bold patterned wallpaper and fabrics and furniture which Pauline has bought from diverse sources including the Impact Furniture Services second-hand outlets. “It’s flea markets, Ikea, Impact and the odd heirloom,” she says. It was the location which first attracted Pauline to High Barton when she viewed the site in the late Nineties: “It was the position. We came up on a June day, it was a late afternoon and it was absolutely magnificent.” The original plan was to extend an existing one-storey cottage on the site but when that was deemed unsafe and taken down, Pauline opted to build a new home for her and her daughter, Sam, a freelance marketing consultant who now lives at Pooley Bridge with her family. Alan Fox, of Penrith, worked on the technical drawings and Pauline’s former husband, Paul Bunting, was heavily involved in the design and construction. Building work took about 18 months and the house includes a courtyard garden and a basement which Pauline uses as a snooker room, with a full size table. The property includes one-third of an acre of gardens and a share in a piece of lake frontage on Ullswater, on the other side of the A592 road. Ask Pauline, who teaches English as a foreign language, to describe her style and she says: “Thrown together; keeps changing.” In reality, the decor is carefully considered. Almost all the curtains, cushions, fabric and wallpapers are from Designers Guild. Pauline was introduced to the brand by a family friend in the Seventies, not long after it was founded by Tricia Guild, and has remained loyal ever since, buying during the sales as much as possible. “I go for Designers Guild for the simple reason I think her style is amazing - she has a fantastic sense of colour.” She buys Designers Guild fabric by the metre to make cushions and uses temporary fixings for curtains, so that she can change them easily. With the exception of a large oil painting which she bought at auction, the art throughout the house has been made by friends, family or someone Pauline knows. The ground floor is dominated by what Pauline calls the big room. Divided into three, it has a sitting room area, a dining room section and a smaller sitting area which can be closed off with folding doors. The kitchen, which is fitted with Magnet units, is painted bright green with blue and pink accents. The glass staircase was inspired by the staircases at Rheged near Penrith and made bespoke by a firm in Perth. Pauline chose the contemporary style as a deliberate contrast to the rest of the house. The bedrooms have Designers Guild wallpaper and four poster beds from Ikea. Pauline’s decorating is done by Lisa and Eddie Farren of Penrith. Eddie also made the window shutters, which are painted in an aqua shade to stand out against the surrounding countryside and to pick up colours in the stonework. The brightly painted courtyard garden was inspired by the Mexican architect Luis Barragán who used colours such as fuchsia and yellow. Growing up in New Zealand, Pauline says looking at the sea and being in sunshine influenced her love of bold colours. Her father, who was a talented amateur artist and keen gardener, also sparked her interest in colour and design. Her grandchildren, Sam’s son Raphael, five, and one-year-old daughter, Sibella, are frequent visitors to High Barton while keepsakes serve to remind her of friends and family dispersed world-wide. An area near her kitchen, which she calls her rogues’ gallery, has a collection of memorabilia from New Zealand and overseas friends. “Every time I walk into the kitchen I almost see the world.”