Ten years ago, when Laura Annala was house-hunting in her hometown of Lapua, southwest Finland, there was one property that kept resurfacing. “It was a detached, yellow-brick bungalow built in the 1980s,” Annala recalls. “It had low ceilings so it wasn’t very bright inside and the rooms were either painted brown or covered in flowery wallpaper. It was really uninspiring.” For two months, she scrolled past the listing until one day her father decided to get on his bicycle and take a closer look.
He found the house was surrounded by a mature garden, thick with flowers and trees. The location was also ideal – it was opposite the local school and Annala and her husband, Jussi, were hoping soon to start a family. It was also “really cheap”, which meant they would have enough money left over to renovate the tired interiors. At the time, Annala, a hair stylist, was starting her own business. She had spent the previous decade living in Helsinki, Tampere and the Netherlands, where she had met Jussi. Now, she was hoping to open her own salon in Lapua. A budget-friendly, three-bedroom bungalow started to make sense.
“We signed the contract and two days later Jussi got seconded for three months 800 miles away in the north of Finland,” Annala says. Luckily, her father – who she describes as “an all-over handyman” – helped with the renovation. They dismantled a wall of cabinets that separated the kitchen from the living room, peeled off reams of wallpaper and replaced the bathroom tiles. Laminate floors were laid throughout. The walls and ceilings were painted either white or black.
Initially, the clean, monochrome scheme suited them. The couple went on to have a boy, Frans, and Annala continued to make a success of her new salon. Then, at the age of 32, when Frans was just a toddler, Annala was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her surgery and subsequent treatment left her with brain damage and chronic migraines.
“I couldn’t do hairdressing any more,” she explains. “I had to give up my career, my salon – everything. Of course it’s been heavy,” she says. “But I’m not too sad, because I started to paint.”
Drawing was something Annala had always done, but she didn’t have the confidence to pursue art as a career. “I just didn’t have the courage to try,” she reflects. Gradually, as Annala recovered from surgery and learned to live with her condition, she rediscovered her “long-lost calling” and found it to be “the best therapy”. Her moving, multi-coloured canvases began to fill their monochrome home.
Soon, Annala’s sister asked her to design a small range of fabrics for the family’s textile company. Annala’s Colour Me Happy collection launched last year and includes blankets, curtains, cushions and fabrics in clashing, acidic colours from tangerine and turquoise to sky blue and lipstick pink. These, too, found their way into Annala’s bungalow. “I realised that my art and my textiles are both made of strong colours, but at home the black wall surfaces started to haunt me,” she says. “About a year ago, I decided to paint everything again. Now it makes much more sense.”
In the living room, the main wall went from black to powder blue. A vintage bookcase by the Finnish company, Lundia, rests against it. “Growing up, we had a similar piece in my parents’ house, so it feels like we’ve always had it.” The couple’s existing sofa was recovered in one of Annala’s own geometric fabrics and paired with a matching armchair. Where there is white wall space, Annala has hung one of her most recent works – a vibrant dreamscape of tumbling fruit, flowers and mythical beasts.
Many of the smaller pieces of furniture and accessories have come from Annala’s grandmother, “an artist and really stylish lady” who now lives in a care home. The ornate coffee table and kitchen chandelier were both hers, as was the gilt mirror in the main bedroom. “The inspiration for our bedroom was the actor Salma Hayek,” says Annala. “I wanted it to be hot and spicy and warm!” On the bed is one of her own designs – a quilted blanket that blares: “Life is lemonade.”
In the kitchen, Annala has replaced the wooden countertop with a bottle-green surface made from recycled plastics. “It has completely transformed the look of the kitchen,” says Annala. The splashback was also replaced with blingy tiles. The rest of the kitchen is original 1980s, albeit with a lick of black paint.
Annala now has a large studio in the centre of Lapua, but she has also created space for her practice at home. This corner of the house is warmed by a brick fireplace complete with Iron Maiden poster – a treasured gift from a friend in the Netherlands. The walls have been hung with paint-splattered wallpaper to hide any of the mess she might be making.
The hallway is home to two of Annala’s most precious pieces: a red and pink canvas painted at the time of her illness, and a work that depicts three jellyfish-like creatures. “It’s one of my first works,” she explains. “I sold it to a friend years ago, but when the opportunity arose for me to buy it back, I didn’t hesitate. I feel that the three figures represent our family.”
In its new guise, Annala’s joyful, art-filled home is a magnet for Frans’s friends, who pile in after school to stare at the walls. “They come over and say, ‘Wow! Your mum is really an artist!’ For Frans, now seven, it’s normal. He has only ever known me as a painter. But for me, I can’t really believe that I’m at this point. I’m still amazed.”
