When Sheilen Rathod came back from America after working on marketing campaigns for the likes of Sony, Ralph Lauren and Coca-Cola, he didn’t know where he wanted to live or what he wanted to do. So as a starting point, he went to stay with fellow graphic designer Peter Manning, a friend from his New York days who had returned to his native Newcastle, and the job and the home found him.

“Peter had been approached by Calvin Klein Jeans to do some work for them and, as I was around, I got involved as well. We set up our company, Reluctant Hero, and in 2004 added Electrik Sheep, a design store and gallery.”

Having established the business, Rathod needed somewhere to live. “This was the first house I saw and, as there were five other people in line to view, I immediately offered the asking price,” he says. The house is in a quiet Georgian square a few minutes’ walk from the Tyne Bridge and vibrant dock area of Newcastle, and from his offices and gallery in Pink Lane. Tucked away down a cul-de-sac, with a walled garden and mature trees on every side, it is hard to believe that this calm, green corner is in a metropolis.

The house was built in 1810 and retains its tall period windows. “The rest was a mess,” says Rathod. “Five students had lived here and someone had spray-painted throughout, and I mean spray-painted everything: walls, doors, light switches, plug sockets and window frames.”

The sitting room had been replastered by the time Rathod was joined by his partner, Claire Parish. “And after that we decided that the whole house needed to be done, top to bottom,” says Parish. So walls were stripped and resurfaced, then gradually painted. “I was keen to add colour,” says Parish, who works at the quayside’s Lazarides Gallery. “But it took many test patches to get the right shades of blue and green, and in the end we settled for Farrow & Ball’s Skylight in the sitting room, which changes colour with the light.”

The long sofa that encourages lounging is made up from two halves of a packing case. “I was strolling through Chelsea Market in New York when I saw the two crate sections,” remembers Rathod. “I agreed a price of $250 for them with the seller and asked if I could borrow a screwdriver. Then I unscrewed the ends and reversed them so that they leant outwards rather than inwards. The guy selling it saw the potential and cursed himself for not charging more.”

At the far end of the sitting room is a tall, bar-style table made from a scaffolding kit, and beside it a painted cupboard from Corbridge-based shop Re. There is also a wooden cross on the wall, found in a skip in New York, and a collection of robots, Incredible Hulk figures and Smurfs arranged on shelves and the mantelpiece. “Sheilen likes lamps and lights,” says Parish, explaining the house’s diverse display of vintage and contemporary illumination.

With a background in art, Parish’s own interest is also on show, with a Banksy print of a girl and balloon in the sitting room, some works by Candice Tripp in the hallway and others by Kelsey Brookes, Lucy McLauchlan, the New York artist collective Faile and James Canty in the bedroom and on the upper landing.

Also on the ground floor is the small but compact kitchen. Rathod is a keen cook and the kitchen is built to be “gutsy” rather than beautiful, with raw brick, butcher’s blocks and steel pipes instead of glossy marble and laminate.

Upstairs there is a spacious square landing that doubles as a parking space for the couple’s bikes, which are hung like artworks on the wall. The main bedroom is painted in a tranquil shade of green, with vintage cupboards on either side of the tiled fireplace and a contemporary wooden-base bed. The guest bedroom is predominantly white, with an antique iron bedstead and, at its foot, a blanket box.

The bathroom, which the couple had gutted and replaced, now contains two hand basins and a generous shower. The walk-in wardrobe next door is stacked high with suitcases, boxes and bags, all of which leaves the main bedroom blissfully clothes-free.

Rathod is now so enamoured of his adopted city that, under the Electrik Sheep label, he and Peter Manning have launched a cult range of “I love NC” T-shirts for those who are proud of their Geordie heritage. As if to complete the circle, Rathod says, “The T-shirts have become so popular that we now mail them out worldwide, even to homesick Geordies in New York.”

www.reluctanthero.co.uk; www.electriksheep.com

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