A new home after divorce

They say that stuff doesn’t make you happy, but when you’re leaving an architecturally designed home you’ve lived in for more than a decade for an uncharted new world, the “stuff ” feels epic. Leaving a marriage takes strength, courage and infinite planning. As I pulled up the anchor and zipped towards singledom in a very fast speedboat, I had little idea how quickly it would run out of fuel. In July 2021 I moved out of our beautiful house, complete with glass-box extension and a kitchen with more skylights than the Shard. A period of renting followed, but I soon began to tire of living in other people’s properties. I craved a real home I could put my own stamp on. I craved a home of my own.

So, in August 2022, I bought a house in northwest London. Built in 1927, it had seen better days. Two weeks later, I bought another one, this time a townhouse with a crumbling roof in Ciutadella, Menorca. It sounds hasty, I know, but Menorca was long in the planning. And that’s one of the positive things about being single in midlife – there’s no one to tell you what to do. A good thing, I think.

So now I had two wrecks to deal with, along with two children to co-parent. Divorce is a destabilising, exhausting business. I was still living in a rental, so every evening I’d head to the empty house I now owned and lie on the floor. Staring up at the ceiling one sunny evening, I had a flash of inspiration. Visions of my old family home remained in my mind like a phantom. It is where my children were born and my ex-husband still lives, and its comforting beigey-grey interiors symbolised an old life that I missed. I realised I didn’t just need a fresh start, I needed an entirely new colour scheme, something utterly radical.

The following day, I traipsed off to Farrow & Ball in Westbourne Grove, which is where I found the hue that was to become an emblem of my emancipation: Incarnadine red – classic and sexy, sumptuous, naughty but with a whiff of the architectural-historical. I knew it would work in high-shine gloss in my hallway and all the way upstairs to the attic.

Then came an outrageous chandelier from Soho Home. Up went photography and art that, when hung against red walls, appeared daring in comparison to its old life on a backdrop of off-white. Several red-gloss Corniches by Vitra were mounted haphazardly up a wall. I was on a roll. I chose a dark green for the sitting room and a punchy brighter green for the pantry. I deliberated over a pink bedroom, but went for calming white instead. In what may have been a step too far, I mismatched the bright red-gloss walls with a staircase painted in Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink. The name was almost enough by itself.

Meanwhile, over on Menorca, I’m painting the ceiling beams Yves Klein blue and the door frames bright orange. I’ve hired a female “foreman” to oversee the building work. Divorced, she moved to Menorca from LA several years ago. One day, as she climbed up on the roof to fix damaged tiles, the women on neighbouring balconies gave her a round of applause. Women don’t generally fix roofs in Spain.

Five years ago, as I stepped cautiously to avoid the Lego pieces hidden in my plush beige carpets, if someone had told me that a) I’d buy two homes in the space of a month and b) I would paint them both like someone who had dropped acid at Burning Man, I would have laughed. But I have, and I can’t quite believe this colourful new life I’m now living is all on my terms.

If cohabiting once felt safe, now some days feel like an endless bungee jump. Has someone checked the rope, I wonder? Best not to think of what might go wrong. Instead, in the cocoon of my colourful interiors, I focus on a new life ahead. In the few months I’ve been here, I’ve achieved a lot, although there is still so much more to do. The choppy seas are far easier to navigate.

Making unilateral decisions feels nothing short of radical – as demonstrated by the new neon-orange door knobs that make my country-cream kitchen look so much more modern. It’s one step at a time. Buying two houses, getting divorced – the big stuff is now behind me. A bold new life awaits. As bold as my new interiors, I hope.

In Pursuit of Happiness: Mating, Marriage, Motherhood, Money, Mayhem by Stacey Duguid is out now (Piatkus, £18.99)

Pictures from top: Stacey Duguid in full colour; Incarnadine red on the staircase walls in Duguid’s northwest London house; the studio; a deco-style fireplace in the sitting room