Take a Look Around This Hard-Working Family Home

When I started on the project, the room felt poorly laid out with bad access around the furniture as you moved through the space. It was important to have a library element to the room, which is seen flanking the fireplace and either side of the double doors. These are symmetrical, creating a nice language with one another and zoning the front seating area of the room. The area at the back of the room is a dedicated TV space with comfortable lounge seating (storage underneath) but crucially can also join together with the front of the room when more people are using the space. 

The often dark and unused ‘middle room’ in these types of houses, this is the TV area. It creates a more cosy, separate space for watching TV while still being connected to the rest of the room by the same wallpaper and paint colour on the joinery. 

For such a busy family, I wanted the kitchen to be a calm space, hence the more muted and natural tones with the flash of colour appearing on the island. Not wanting to lose any decorative element to the room, there are areas with open shelving for displaying dried goods and artwork, with additional high-level storage and a dedicated laundry space in the new utility tucked in the corner of the kitchen – a space again carved out of the old ‘middle room’. 

At the base of the stairs leading up to the top floor, the landing wasn’t large enough for a decent-sized piece of furniture – a writing table or seating corner, for example – but it did need something decorative in the area. The wall-mounted bracket adds that decorative flourish and doesn’t take up floor space, which is crucial for allowing free access around it. The horizontal line of the shelf helps to ground the painting in its space, provides space for a small lamp that can act as a nightlight outside the children’s bedrooms and has curved corners to make movement around it easier. 

This is the room that needed most thought to ensure it became a sanctuary for the couple. My task was to create the right design for an all-encompassing experience, and we found a wonderful William Morris scenic wallpaper with matching fabric. A secondary brief that it should be like Miss Marple’s study meant I often found myself asking what she, in particular, would like! When in use, the window seat has become a great space to lay out papers near the desk, and the open space for baskets below with shaped supports is great additional storage. We thought Miss Marple would likely have had an open fire in her work space. Because this was a brand-new room as part of the roof extension with no existing chimney breast, we created a fake one and installed a faux fireplace with mantlepiece that looks like it has been there for a long time. Combined with an antique desk and antique artworks, the whole room has become an immersive retreat. 

This space on the landing is ‘his’ dressing area, with a fitted wardrobe, hidden clothes storage in the wall behind a wallpapered jib door, and personalised artwork. The main feature is the red and brown striped paper that gives a more masculine feel. The paper is hung in such a location that it helps define this space as an additional room rather than part of the staircase which has its own separate colours. 

I wanted to create a cosy nook for the eldest boy. In a small space, the best solution was a fitted wall of joinery including high-level shelf storage, a small wardrobe, and the bed all along one wall, leaving the rest of the room for a desk and chair. We lined the walls in a faux linen wallpaper to make it feel more grown up and framed some artwork of his favourite film and computer game characters.

This room is a nursery, study and guest bedroom (using a sofa bed). We enlivened it with a lemon tree wallpaper the client fell in love with – and it works well in this multipurpose space.

The aim here was to make a room filled with colour and interest for two young boys, but also one that would grow with them, with lots of dedicated clothes storage, end-of-bed benches to hide toys and games, and space to play in the middle of the room. The headboards each had a brush fringe applied to the rear as a decorative flourish, and each bed has a dedicated reading light and switch above the headboard. We inserted dinosaur wallpaper in the centre of the shaker wardrobe doors for a playful touch, and ensured the joinery had adjustable shelves and hanging rails.

This room in the roof existed when the client moved in, but needed a refresh. A substantial change we made was adding a section of storage behind the headboard. This pushed the bed forward and, as it was under the eaves, allowed for a slightly higher headboard than previously. Thanks to wallpaper and curtains, and blind and bed valance used in the same pattern and colourway, it’s a calming and enveloping space. The bedsides add a flash of colour. Again because of the sloping eaves, the bedside lamps have to be quite short, but they add a useful glow at reading height.