Notting Hill Villa

The owners of this early Victorian villa in a ‘garden district’ of London are world-renowned gallerists. They wanted a house that combined its very countrified setting with their collection of hugely important modern pictures. The challenge for me was to create a décor that didn’t swamp one or other, and to achieve a pleasing harmony by a combination of simple, mainly continental furniture and comfortably upholstered seating in a subtly-shaded palette, enlivened with chintzes and textures, such as a library in deep green mohair, for wall-coverings. In the dining room, I beefed up the existing plaster moldings with colour framing specialist-painted chinoiserie motifs, or added slabs of faux marble reflected in the strong linear frame of the master-bathroom’s mirrored wall.