An early Georgian House

This house is more of a cottage – with tiny rooms and a wonderful, diminutive scale – in a fabulous terrace of listed early Georgian houses on the edge of Highgate, then just a small country village now consumed into London.

Our clients are a young family who had lived in the house for a number of years and loved it, but needed to make it better fit for their lifestyle. A dark galley kitchen was ripped out and we tore off awful rear extensions before remodelling to create a new lower-ground floor kitchen and, at the ground floor, an octagonal bay bookroom/study in place of a miserable and barely-used WC.

Listed building permission was achieved and we moved slowly into construction phase and then to decoration. The owners had a sense of fun and adventure but no preconceptions, and we worked with them to achieve a house that was full of charm and surprise. As we worked together, it emerged that they had a love of colour and pattern and the living rooms are richly coloured and packed with fun. Bedrooms are calmer and more restful but belong happily with the whole ensemble.

A City Apartment

For a London legal couple, with a strong interest in early 20th century European design, we entirely remodelled this apartment in a handsome Grade II building in very heart of  the City, overlooking the Tower of London.  Combining two apartments into one, we completely replanned the internal layout of the flat, in the process persuading our clients to move from a nominal three bedroom apartment to two – but with a suite of fantastically designed, architectural spaces as a result.

Following quite a lengthy process to obtain building and listed building consents, we commenced work which was comprehensive – new finishes and joinery throughout, complete rewiring and re-servicing, before we started the decoration process.

The apartment has a rich blend of colours, a palette that draws from pre-WW2 apartments in Vienna or Berlin, with stubby olive greens and dark chocolate combined with white walls and flashes of colour.  New parquet floors were installed throughout. The furniture and artwork was drawn from our clients’ ecclectic collection and a custom-designed burr walnut bookshelf made for the drawing room, which cunningly conceals a TV in the lower cabinets.

We have subsequently worked on the design of an early 20th century apartment building in Prague, for the same owners – an equally happy process.

Ben’s London house

Ben and Charlie live on the top floor of an old Georgian house in Bloomsbury that now provides the headquarters to a renowned artistic society. The flat was added and extended out of old attic garrets in the 1920s, and now provides a stunning, light-filled interior with a view over the leafy square.

The flat, in contrast to The Old Parsonage, uses layers of more contemporary fabrics, furniture and lighting – but combined with a bold use of antique furniture and engravings to create a mood that is at once modern and traditional, restful yet richly-coloured.