A maximalist’s dream of bold colour, clashing pattern and treasured objects awaits behind these old stone walls

In my family, the first morning of a holiday usually goes something like this. Longish lie. Check the weather. Then locate the nearest decent coffee joint, where we’ll plot our day once the caffeine has sharpened our faculties. Not so at North Farm.

I tumble out of bed as soon as sunlight creeps through a crack in the curtains, eager to explore our home for the weekend in the clarity of day. There are so many nooks and objects to examine throughout its seven bedrooms, five bathrooms and three sitting rooms – vintage china, antique furniture, painting upon pattern upon print – that we don’t make it out of the door until 1pm. Wouldn’t you do the same if you were staying in a house designed by Rita Konig?

Yes, I’m talking about the Rita Konig: formidable interior designer (it’s in the genes – her mum is the legendary Nina Campbell), tastemaker and writer.

An elegant home from home

North Farm is the holiday home she renovated in County Durham, available to hire for admirers of her gently eccentric, English country style. Or, as Rita points out, for people who might not dig fabric-draped walls and frilly lampshades in their own homes but would welcome a change of scenery.

“I like holidaying in another person’s taste for a week,” she says. “In fact, I’m much more interested in that than going to a house that looks exactly like my own.”

Good thing too, as I suspect she’d struggle to find another place that resembles this charming Victorian farmhouse.

Unlike many other holiday rentals, where all it takes is a stack of white Ikea plates or a paint-by-algorithm poster to serve as a cold-splash reminder that nobody lives there, North Farm has been decorated with generous thought and care. Rita’s own family spend time here, and it shows. There are framed photos, Hubert de Givenchy prints (signed by the fashion designer “pour Nina” and later gifted to Rita’s daughter Margot), collections of pebbles and shells.

Hundreds of well-thumbed books are crammed into bookshelves and arranged in piles atop tables and drawers throughout North Farm.

Characterful bedrooms are alive with colour

The house is arranged over two floors and sleeps fourteen people across its warren of characterful bedrooms. It could easily have felt a bit empty and sprawling for our family of three. Yet we are very cosy curled up in this cocoon of memories.

The personal knick-knacks feel like old pals, and Rita’s flair for combining the unexpected with the interesting makes every room feel as though it’s already mid-party, or at least mid-conversation. Each one is dense with pattern, layered with texture and alive with colour.

Colour creates harmony between drawing and living rooms

The drawing room is painted in Edward Bulmer’s Invisible Green, which Rita likens to Babar the Elephant’s coat. Bulmer mixed Trumpington, the earthy yellow in the entrance hall, specifically for her (“I rang him and asked him to make me a sort of dirty tobacco colour,” she recalls).

Each of the three sitting rooms has a working fire, overlapping rugs and squashy sofas strewn with cushions of every stripe, ikat and floral. Even the bathrooms are warm and inviting; some wallpapered, others dotted with wicker chairs and art. I take a bath with my baby as my husband perches on a stool beside us, our chat interrupted now and then by the cows we can see through the window, grazing in the next field.

What defines a “successfully designed” home?

“A house is a success when you want to sit and be in it; hang out, read the books, get your bottom in the back of the sofa and feel comfortable,” says Rita. “I was definitely influenced when decorating North Farm by some of the houses I grew up in, particularly holiday homes in Scotland. All of us together, all ages, enjoying that summer feeling of people playing cards and puzzles, going off on picnics then coming back to the house again.”

The ingredients for such an experience are in plentiful supply here. Board games and playing cards. A drinks tray jammed with spirits. Two TVs, multiple Bluetooth speakers.

Finding secrets in the walled garden

In North Farm’s walled garden, a heavenly wedge of green, there’s a barbecue in one corner and, further along, a dining table sitting beneath the leafy shade of an apple tree, boughs heavy with fruit.

Across the yard on the other side of the house, a tall stone barn has been converted into a games room with a pool table, table-tennis table and log burner. Now you understand why it’s difficult to prise ourselves away. But eventually we do.

Exploring joy beyond the grounds of North Farm

Off to the nearby market town of Barnard Castle we go – not for an eye test but for a rummage in the excellent antiques shops Rita frequents to find trinkets and curios for the house. “That’s something I’ve done since I was young. My mum and her friend Virginia would drive us all over the place looking for antiques and little junk shops,” she recalls.

“I’m always finding bits and pieces to add to North Farm – books of Yorkshire poems, a plate that would be pretty on a bedside table or could be used as a soap dish.”

Return to bliss

We return to North Farm empty-handed but filled to the brim with anticipation for an evening of home comforts. Steak dinner at the long Italian dining table in the kitchen, laid with Bordallo Pinheiro’s cabbage crockery. A glass of wine by the fire at North Farm, where we draw up a list of all the places we’ll visit next time we stay. Luciano Giubbilei’s gardens at Raby Castle; the High Force waterfall; the coastal town of Saltburn-by-the-Sea.

But for now, we stay put, sleepy and content. When you’re wrapped in the hug of a house like this, there’s nowhere else you need to be.

Join us on an escape to the cosy award-winning Kildrummy Inn