How to transform a shepherd's hut into the perfect, country guest house

Bedrooms

In North Yorkshire, Melanie Phipps has furnished a pair of shepherd’s huts with every creature comfort.

When Melanie Phipps and her young family left London for North Yorkshire, she was drawn to the idea of merging upmarket glamping with B&B. After much research, she decided to install two shepherd’s huts from Dorset-based manufacturers, Plankbridge. Fitted with bathrooms and woodburners, one stands in a field under an oak tree, the other in the walled garden.

When it came to decorating them, Mrs Phipps opted to include all the comforts of a full-sized house, within the limited space at her disposal. With this in mind, she ensured that the king-size bed is extra-long ‘for tall guests’.

An eye for tiny details is clearly a forte, too. A quiet stripe in rust-red on oatmeal, sourced locally through Waltons Mill Shop, was used for the window blinds and the bed valance; the latter is on a swing arm to access storage underneath the bed. The bed linen was sourced from Cornwall-based Antique Designs.

The walls are covered in tongue-and-groove and painted in Farrow & Ball’s All White and the oak floors are covered with a lime-washed harlequin pattern. Mirrors, sourced from Dairy House Antiques in Wiltshire, have been strategically placed to bounce light around the space.

Meanwhile, Mrs Phipps’s husband, Jake (a respected furniture designer), made the breakfast table, which is supported by a reclaimed hayfeeder bracket.