When I set up my own Interiors studio in 2000, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the success I’d have straight away.

My first commission was a total gut job of a mews house in South Kensington, ‘The Biscuit’, as my client affectionately named it. A English gentleman who had clearly been overindludged with digestives at elevenses by Nanny, so much so that warm comforting tones lodge firmly as his favourite colour.

He’d be a challenge now.

Whenever I showed him anything, he’d ask, “Do I like it?”

The result?

A house I will always thank for quietly catapulting my career out of the starting gates.

London was buzzing. People were flying in, buying, building and I was left with keys, builders, and a blank canvas. Clients would return when it was done.

Shopping trips were fun.

Buying trips to New Orleans… even more so.

I remember an antique dealer placing a hot cup of tea on a wooden commode, proudly declaring it had come from Versailles.

Silly moments like that have kept me smiling and loving what I do all these years.

Houses were stripped back to the sky. Guest cottages sunk into London gardens. Polished plaster hardened on endless walls. Frenchmen hung metres upon metres of fabric. Furniture was designed and handmade in England; never a scrap of foam in sight.

And the legendary Marianne Topham would bring my ideas to life with watercolours that allowed clients to see what I already could.

One Christmas, everything stopped.

Or rather — it didn’t.

I filled my flat to the ceiling with shopping while we pulled off the impossible: a complete gut and refurbishment of a home in Belgravia in a matter of six weeks.

We’re talking marble surround baths, handmade furniture, cashmere curtains, art on the walls, bubbles in the fridge, and laminated phone directories by the bed; they’d never lived in England, so a few emergency numbers, Partridges, and the doctor felt essential.

The owner Marta Ortega of Zara.

Total carte blanche.

The only instruction: “By the 5th of January… make it slightly less masculine than ”The Biscuit.”

I left their headquarters in La Coruña, cheque in hand, called my mother to say I wouldn’t make Christmas and got on with it.

And we did it.

The extraordinary clients stacked up over the years.

The owners of the world’s largest cruise ships. A prominent Spanish family. The drummer of Coldplay.

From cobbled mews to alpine chalets with underground parking for sixteen cars.

From the architectural detailing… to the bed linen.

And all of it done one way.

Just me.

Virgo. Control freak. Can’t delegate.

Loved every minute.

The only regret?

I didn’t photograph everything — at least not professionally.

There simply wasn’t time.

As one project finished, another would appear. It became a running joke at home, a week before completion I’d say to my husband, “I don’t have another job…”

And within days, the phone would ring.

Every time.

Everything I did was word of mouth.

I am, without question, the world’s worst self-promoter.

At a dinner party, if someone told me they’d just bought a house, would I mention I was an interior designer?

Not a chance.

I’ve always preferred people to come to me because they’d seen something.

Which is why, in 26 years, I’ve only ever pitched for two jobs.

The first — Will Champion. Thankfully, I got it. The second — a house in Oxfordshire.

We weren’t a match.

But she was my instinct girl.

And that conversation led me here.

Somewhere along the way, without quite realising it, something else had been forming.

At long lunches with the infamous Truffles & Ruffles, I found myself talking about how the industry had changed. Clients wanted to be involved now.

Sounds funny, but most of my career I was largely left to it.

And then one day — during that Oxfordshire pitch, she asked me what I thought about the colour wheel.

Hand on heart, I must have skipped that lesson.

I’ve never studied it. Never used it.

Later, she said to me, “What you do… is instinct.”

Of all the magazine covers, all the projects, that was, quietly, one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had.

Well… that and the Polish plumber on a large project in Lansdowne Crescent, who passed me on the stairs, looked around, and said:

“Your style is timeless.”

And then something shifted.

Not suddenly. Not dramatically.

Just… a growing sense that I wanted to do more than one house at a time.

Because at the heart of it, this isn’t about design.

It’s about people.

I saw it clearly on my honeymoon in South Africa, Christmas 2003.

A young boy from our hotel , who sang like Pavarotti, took us to see his home in the township.

I’m slightly ashamed to say, I expected the worst.

But when the corrugated door opened, I stepped into an immaculate space. The prettiest floral duvet. Everything in its place.

And his mother, beaming with pride.

It stopped me in my tracks.

We all want the same thing.

A space that feels like ours.

My mind has always been busy. Ideas constantly moving.

But when the time was right, everything came together.

And Colour Confidence was born.

A way for people to trust their own instinct when it comes to colour. To create a home that comes from them, not from rules, or trends, copying others or fear of getting it wrong.

I knew it worked.

But for months, I was too frightened to test it.

It felt like holding a lottery ticket, as long as you don’t check the numbers, the dream is still alive.

Thankfully one day, I bit the bullet.

I took my sister Amber, picked her up in Knightsbridge, drove her down to Chelsea Harbour and in that fifteen minutes, gave her a brief set of instructions and the butterfly image she’d chosen the night before.

I sent her off to the showrooms I knew would suit her style. Told her not to speak to anyone.

An hour later… she’d pulled together a scheme.

A complete self confessed novice.

And it worked.

The look on her face said everything.

And just so you know…

About ten days later, I heard a story from a friend of a friend who runs a showroom:

“It was the strangest thing, Gytha came in with a client and made them choose everything themselves… she didn’t help them!”

So you see.

I didn’t cheat.

And if you’re still here, reading my ramble, thank you.

If you’re feeling that pull to create your own home, but without wading through rules and interiors jargon… I understand.

You probably just want to get on with it.

If that’s you, I’d love to hear from you because this way of working, it works. And I’d be delighted to show you how.