Christmas, in our opinion, tis not the season of the minimalist. Come the festive period, we’re prepared to fully forego the ‘less is more’ mantra and yield to the contrary belief that no number of baubles, wreaths, garlands, ribbons and candles can be too much. But there’s an art to that, of course, so, for some guidance on the matter, we visited theatre director Sean Mathias’s Georgian townhouse in Hackney to see how a maximalist Christmas is best done.

Sean moved from Hyde Park to his Grade II-listed house on Mare Street, currently for sale via The Modern House, in 2008, drawn eastward by the neighbourhood-charm of nearby London Fields and the up-and-coming feel of Hackney. He has further laid down roots in east London since moving in, opening a pub, The Grapes in Limehouse, with his husband Paul, publisher Evgeny Lebedev and his ex-partner Ian McKellen, who he is currently directing in Ian McKellen On Stage at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Here, we talk to Sean about the emotional importance of home, his new renovation project in his native Wales, and what he’ll be doing for Christmas this year. Check out the listing for Sean’s house here.

Sean: “After looking at about 100 houses, I was at the end of my search in east London. I went online and thought, right I’m going to give this one more shot. I went to see a converted pub near Tower Hill, which I loved except for the no-man’s-land feel of the area, and then this.

“I got off the bus, stood outside and just went, ‘Ah’. I couldn’t believe it. The door opened and I came into the entrance with the long hallway, and I just sort of fell in love with it. It was five o’clock on a Friday and I walked out, called my partner and he said I should put an offer in. He hadn’t even seen it, but he said, ‘I can hear it in your voice, you love it.’

“So, I put an offer in and ten minutes later they came back and said, ‘It’s not quite enough but you’re close. It was then almost five-thirty on a Friday. I played it slightly cool, letting them sweat it out until Monday morning, when I put the offer in, and they accepted.

“It was like this but quite shabby – heavily lived in, shall we say. I redid all the floorboards and redecorated everything, and, because of my work, I’m on the road for up to nine months a year, so it’s a lot more lightly lived in now.

“Being away so much, the sad thing is that I feel I don’t entertain here enough. I’d love to host more because it’s a great house for sharing with friends. That’s what I’ll do in Wales, I think, where I have just bought a house I’m going to renovate in The Mumbles on the Gower Peninsula. Friends will come down and we’ll be able to fully let go of London life.

“I’m from Wales originally, so I’m going back to my roots; I’ve grown sentimental in my old age, I think! It’s funny because about five years ago I was working a lot in New York and was thinking of moving there fulltime.

“I realised that, in the end, I am British and living here is more important to me. Culturally, I’m from here and my work and all the ideas in my work are informed by me living here. Now, I’ve gone even further into that by going back to Wales, which has turned out to be a real surprise.

“Starting this project in Wales has got me thinking about ideas and inspiration for the interior, because I think my interior style is always led by the space I’m filling – it’s site-specific. But my taste is reflected in that horrible word, eclectic and I take influences from lots of different places.

“I think modernity at home is to do with how we live now, and I think you can live in a contemporary way with things from different periods all around you. I think I just want to feel comfortable at home, so I have lots of armchairs and sofas, lovely beds. Those are the things I’ve been researching most for the new house – they’re the starting point for me.

“That’s the problem with minimalism. I don’t know if I could live in a minimalist space, I wouldn’t feel luxurious. Or, I would feel luxurious intellectually, but that’s not the same – I’m a sensualist! I want fabrics and colours, wallpapers and plants. And animals. We’ve got one dog, but I’d have more if we spend more time in Wales.

“So, a house has got to live, to breathe, and I think that the need for a home is even greater maybe than ever before; I think it’s true for all of us.

“The problem is that we’re saturated in the modern world. We’re saturated with ideas and manipulations and overexposed to social media. And we’re sort of exhausted and confused, which I don’t think helps us to find our identity. In fact, I think it sort of confuses identity, which why is it’s so important to have a home you can feel yourself in.

“I can only really follow my own taste. I mean, I couldn’t have done this house out of a book. Of course, I look at magazines, I look at books and I look at movements and periods of time and everything. But at the end of the day, this is me. It’s about authenticity and, it’s the same with theatre.

“I mean, I’m very stylized in my work, but I think the root of it is based in an emotional truth and a rawness. I suppose I can only do what is my taste and I have to hope that it will reflect the tastes of other people who will want to see it.

“You stay modern and relevant in theatre by producing work that people come and see, respond to and have an emotional response that isn’t just, ‘Oh, that was terribly good’. It’s when someone says ‘Oh, my God, I really connected to that, it really spoke to me’. There’s a big difference between those two.

“The last few Christmases we’ve spent with Ian because he turned 80 this year, so it’s quite nice us all being together at Christmas. Two Christmases ago, we went to Cape Town for the first time in about ten years and I really didn’t like it. There were just too many people, traffic everywhere like the south of France in August, and it was endless parties and dinners, which I used to love but now I find very dull and exhausting.

“Now I want to do the right sort of entertaining, which is close friends, relaxed, not too many people, which is why I want next Christmas to be in Wales. This Christmas I’m going to spend it at Ian’s and then I’m going to Italy to meet my other partner at the pub, in Venice first, which is lovely, and then he’s got a house in Umbria that we go to for New Year’s.

“It will be a slightly working Christmas this year because my latest production with Ian, Ian McKellen On Stage, runs until January 5th, which means I won’t be able to make the most of these wonderful Christmas decorations by Pines and Needles. But I’m going to have a small dinner here tonight with a couple of close friends instead. Cooking is something I hardly ever do but when I’ve got time, like I do today, I will enjoy it.

“What do I want for Christmas? Oh, you know what I wouldn’t mind? That DNA set, the ancestry set. Or I like woolly things at Christmas: socks, scarves, or, if someone is feeling really luxurious, a cashmere sweater – those are my favourite.”