Elgin Crescent

For a happy former client, we were delighted to help on a new project in the heart of Notting Hill, restoring and upgrading one of the boldly coloured 19th-century townhouses in Elgin Crescent.

Following a significant programme of architectural redesign – the house had been very poorly renovated by a developer, and our task was to put back an interior will a suitably authentic historic character – we moved on to design the interiors throughout the tall townhouse. We were inspired to create a layered house that blended the spirit of today with the best of 1970s and early 80s English decoration – hessian walls, Morris & Co wallpapers, traditional joinery – an atmosphere that the house had perhaps been inherited from a stylish aunt rather than having a top-to-toe, bland renovation so beloved of the Notting Hill Estate Agent.   A strong sense of colour and pattern abounds throughout, but with the hope that this interior will look as fresh and interesting in thirty years’ time as it does today.

A Georgian House in Westminster

A stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament, on one of the finest early Georgian streets in London, is this beautiful pair of houses that in 1906 had been combined to form a single dwelling.  After 40 years with the same family, the house was bought by new owners and we had a wonderful project working with them to repair and restore the interiors and the complete a programme of decoration.

We remodelled the whole house, moving the kitchen and bathrooms, restoring the staircase, putting back panelling, replacing walls that had been taken down – all steered brilliantly through Listed Building Consent (the house is Grade II* listed) by our senior design director Rupert Cunningham, who designed and oversaw the architectural project.

The interiors are intentionally simple, drawing on the original early 18th century character of the rooms, but with a playful sense of pattern, and a palimpsest of history, running through its veins.  We used extensive fabrics and papers from Watts of Westminster, Morris & Co and Robert Kime in developing a palette of soft, calm greys, taupes and greens, with splashes of burned red, yellow and Prussian blue throughout.

The garden was completely remodelled by Pip Morrison and we designed a metal glasshouse at the corner of the garden which catches the rays of the evening sun.

A Chelsea Apartment

We designed this apartment for an Anglo-Asian family with a penchant for traditional English interior decoration but with a strong sense of colour and pattern. Occupying two floors of a Chelsea Mansion block, we started work by remodelling the architectural framework of the building – where two apartments on two different floors had been very poorly connected with a hideous glass and metal spiral staircase in the early 1980s.  We reconfigured both floors entirely to achieve a properly detailed Victorian staircase which had a huge impact in opening up the volume of the apartment and making it feel significantly larger than before.

Elsewhere, lowered ceilings were removed, and architecturally authentic mouldings and details restored; a simple new kitchen and bathrooms designed and missing details replaced. Together with our clients we developed a richly coloured decorative palette with warm yellows and orange colours on the ground floor, a bold acid green gloss paint on the kitchen walls, and a more restful and traditional scheme in the bedrooms, with beautifully made traditional curtains and upholstery.

Working to an extremely tight timescale, the renovation was completed in time for a happy first Christmas in London.