Learn the art of dressing a room from the maven of timeless style, Mr Douglas Mackie.

Mr Douglas Mackie is one of Britain’s foremost interior designers, renowned not just for his intuitive eye for colour and space, but his deep love of art history, design and antiques. Since he established his eponymous design firm in 1995, he’s become particularly well known for elegant, atmospheric schemes that sensitively incorporate (and showcase) his clients’ art collections. Which is why, no doubt, he’s been tapped to appear at next week’s The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia in London, the largest show of its kind in the British capital, celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. Mr Mackie’s talk “A Point Of View” will take place at 2.30pm on Tuesday 27 June, and cover the past 20 years of his projects, showcasing how he has managed to seamlessly integrate art and antiques of all periods into his clients’ homes. In the meantime, though, we at MR PORTER thought it a good opportunity to consult the designer for a few pearls of interior-design wisdom, which you can find below.

“When you look at the great interior magazines, like World Of Interiors, it’s not about trends. It’s about enduring quality, things that are extraordinary, things that have integrity. I would say generally a lot of what are considered trends don’t really have any integrity. Trends, in interior design, are really more about the surface – style as a surface design that’s applied onto something else. And that isn’t what good architecture or good interior design is about. At the moment, there is a lot of very similar work being produced that is highly repetitive: curved 1950s sofas and spindly light fittings everywhere, and it’s already looking tired and dated. The best work around is extremely individual, daring in its choice of colours and combinations of furniture.”

“Absorb what’s around you, but also apply a critical faculty when you’re looking at things. It’s about constant editing: the ability to look at something and understand why you like it, why you don’t like it; why something is good and why something’s mediocre; why something is downright awful. Simply looking at it isn’t enough. It’s learning to understand what its intrinsic qualities, or lack thereof, are all about.”

“Generally there are some very bold schemes I’ve done in certain rooms, but they rely on two or three statement pieces, each with a very strong identity. And then the other elements in that room need to be rather reticent. Otherwise it’s like having three rather aggressively dominant people sitting round the same dinner table. It doesn’t really work terribly well.”

“I think ultimately mixing pieces from different periods makes a scheme more timeless. That acknowledgement of the past, the present and the cutting edge… It’s almost creating a sense of historical continuity within the interior. Some things will resonate by juxtaposition rather than being of entirely similar periods. We recently commissioned an extraordinary chandelier, six metres long, made out of dandelion seeds and set in bronze. This was hung in a Tudor dining room, and the contrast is spectacular. So, again, it’s all about creating a sense of balance: trying to find elements that have a contrast but can speak to each other in terms of their scale and proportions and relative force.”

“As the years go by, sometimes it’s just about a radical re-hanging of the art. Then, on the basis of the art, re-covering a couple of the sofas and bringing in a couple of chairs by an interesting new designer. It’s keeping that freshness of approach. Fortunately with interiors, one can gradually change things and they can evolve.”