Comfort Zones

The design scheme for this family home in West London started out as something a bit more sober – but as its Sri Lankan owners settled in to a relationship of trust with architect and design studio Own London, they realised that they felt comfortable with testing a few boundaries.

“At the beginning they were very cautious; it was almost like they didn’t want to say too much [to us] in case we went completely bonkers,” says Alicia Meireles, Own London’s creative director. “We started with a very calm palette – something much more safe – and then, as we got to know them better, we realised that actually they did like colour. We thought, OK, let’s try to push this a little bit further.”

Own London is a full-service, multidisciplinary studio, and took on the architectural side of the project as well as working on the interiors. A rear ground floor extension and a conversion of the roof space have created extra room, while the layouts elsewhere have been rationalised to create larger rooms or make space flow, “all to just serve the family a lot better in the way they live,” says Meireles.

The sitting area in the new extension has the feel of a sunlit contemporary orangery, with lush houseplants and a pair of vintage colonial-style chairs adding a tropical touch. The garden is framed by floor-to-ceiling glazing on one side and an additional overhead rooflight; one wall is clad in terracotta tiles by Cristina Celestino for Fornace Brioni, a nod to the brick of the exterior architecture. They’re arranged in a random pattern and spaced close together with no grouting, so it feels more like a relief mural than a tiled wall.

At the centre of the house, the kitchen is more classically ‘London’, with marble-topped cabinetry painted in Little Greene’s Obsidian Green paint, and a walnut island. Concealed appliances mean that this is not a room that you would want to shut away, and Meireles adds that “it was imperative that we made sure everything worked well: the owners cook a lot and they wanted everything in the right place. They was a lot of reconfiguration as we made sure it was exactly how they wanted to use it.” The kitchen connects both to the dining room – with its vintage dining table and chairs – and orangery, giving the layout an intuitive flow whether the couple are entertaining or just enjoying family life.

At the front of the house and bathed in blue paint, a family room for watching TV provides a more snug and intimate space to hang out, retaining its grand period features. Initially wanting to create a statement on one of the walls, Meireles instead decided to put the focus on the ceiling: she spent a while searching for a wallpaper pattern that was uni-directional so it could be understood from all angles, before alighting on Christopher Farr’s Child’s Check, based on a 1928 rug design by Anni Albers. It’s framed in beading that shares the same block-like design.

To help make sense of the fragmented layout as you travel up the house, Own London repositioned and redesigned the staircase; now, there are slim cast iron spindles with a bobbin-like motif on every other spindle – Meireles says they’re “not modern, but not too traditional either” – with a sinuous stained oak handrail and treads in the same material.

The master bedroom is where the clients’ burgeoning bold side comes to the fore. Against bone-white walls, a single piece of joinery, upholstered in Dedar’s Schwarzwald, a rich tapestry-like linen, forms the bed and headboard and also stretches the length of the wall – a softly padded cocoon that invites you to hop in to bed and stay a while. The master bathroom also has an opulent side with its swathes of Calacatta Retro marble, used as two wide strips on the floor and up the wall, framing either side of a double vanity unit.

This house thoughtfully embraces its owners Sri Lankan heritage while still feeling entirely appropriate for London’s typical period housing stock. “We knew they would have grown up with lots of colour around them, so we tried to introduce that here and there while keeping it really elegant and modern,” says Meireles. “They were so much happier than if we’d played safe all the way.”