Interiors: a blank canvas - in pictures

Perfect plaster When I bought my flat, a Victorian conversion, I took all the walls back and decided to leave them as plaster, rather than adding a paint finish. All I did was seal them with a PVA plaster finish from a builders’ merchant. It gives a really soft, powdery finish, and a colour to the walls that changes with the light. Photograph: Richard Boll

Look to nature for inspiration I’m drawn to the bleached colours of dried flowers, shell, driftwood and bone, which is where the palette for the flat comes from. I found the sheep’s skull by my fireplace while walking on the moors in Devon. Photograph: Richard Boll

Choose bare, natural wood I sanded the floorboards and treated them with bleach, so they wouldn’t have that orange pine colour. Once a year or so I clean them with a steam cleaner. Photograph: Richard Boll

Be unconventional A bathroom doesn’t have to look like a bathroom. I found this lovely Turkish urn at Brighton market and painted it cream. The piece of weathered timber is from a local wood recycling yard, and the radiator is from Ardingly Antiques Fair, near Gatwick airport. Photograph: Richard Boll

Plan ahead I bought my roll-top bath from a reclamation yard, long before I had a flat, and put it into storage. It was rare to find one so deep and which didn’t have tap holes drilled into it, so I knew I had to grab it. Photograph: Richard Boll

Add some drama The pillar in the kitchen is from an architectural salvage yard that deals in Indian artefacts. People always comment on it. A friend made the kitchen for me. The cabinets are painted Mid Lead 114 by Little Greene; I also used this in the bathroom to carry the colour through the flat. For similar wall-mounted letters, try Re. Photograph: Richard Boll

Enlarge your living space... This is not a large flat, but keeping a similar palette of colours and materials throughout makes the space feel as though it flows seamlessly from one room to the next. It never feels claustrophobic. Photograph: Richard Boll

Edit, edit, edit I’ve created these displays and collections gradually, but sometimes you have to let things go. Zoe Ellison was talking to Ros Anderson. Ellison is co-owner of i gigi store and co-author of A Life Less Ordinary (Cico Books, £25). Photograph: Richard Boll