HOUSE TOUR | A Playful London Townhouse Defined by Punchy Prints

today on homeworthy we're visiting the bright and playful London home of interior designer Laura Stevens in true English fashion she has combined chint florals and Stripes throughout the rooms in a way that feels simultaneously sophisticated and relaxed you're watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story by clicking the join button below you not only support the production of these episodes you also gain access to excl exclusive content just for members and today you'll get a look into the darling bathroom perfect for Laura's three daughters complete with checkerboard floors and a pink tub so join today to see more of the homes you love hi homeworthy my name is Laura Stevens and welcome to my London home come in [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is a a reception we at the front of the house house and um I wanted to really create quite a formal but really comfortable um aesthetic in this room and the color of the walls is super important to me because I painted it when I first came uh came here and it was kind of like a a pearly gray and it just was just really cold so a few years ago I painted it in this lovely kind of warm stone color which is called clay by little green um and then it really sets off color really well against it so um we have the vintage yellow lining on these chairs um and I was really mindful of just trying to warm everything up and make it feel really layered um and there's a lot of pattern going on in the room um I have all these cushions on the sofa which I set against this stripe um and I'm really feel like stripe is almost like a neutral um so yeah I love I love a stripe and the pattern works really well against it it doesn't Clash this is Lulu she's trying to get involved here um I wanted to create some symmetry as well cuz I wanted to um it really helps to add that sense of formality so it's a really nice layout and the square aspect of this room really allowed me to set it up like uh really four more reception rooms so we've got a sofa we've got two armchairs facing it's really convivial and it's all set around the fireplace and the fireplace is original we really lucky um that that was there the cornering I think is a replacement of the original it was here when we came in but we're just so lucky with the proportions of this house cuz the ceilings are really tall and it's got a really Grand feeling to it and I wanted to really engage with that without making it feel like a kind of that we're living in a Jane Austin period drama because I live here with my three children and my dog um so it's all about kind of celebrating the Grande of the house but being a really comfortable practical family home um I'm not precious about it at all as you can see the dog is everywhere even though I swore she would never go on any sofas obviously gave up on that after about a week um but the Symmetry again is reflected here in the window so we've got these really pretty lamps with big Shades and then I love um a chintzy fabric but my husband was like not too much flour so um I chose this chintzy um but quite sort of soft and subtle fabric from kofax and Fowler for the for the drapes um and the rest of the items I've really just picked up over the years um I love collecting artwork um I had this really cute um plate made of Lulu which I love that's one of my favorite things in the room and that's by a ceramist called rabina Jack um and yeah the rest of the items are just stuff that I've built up over the years really it's a lot I have a lot of copied books and my husband literally can't believe that I use them but I really do because I find um interior design books and historical books really inspiring and I tried to look to them instead of kind of Instagram for inspiration because they really celebrate the tradition of decorating a lot of these are from all around the world a lot of them are kind of British traditional style but I also have like there's a book here on Italian um architecture on Australian um homes so yeah I I do really use um but I do have I have quite a collection the coffee table is groaning and I think I might have to do an edit before I get anymore but um but yeah it's a they're a great form of inspiration for my work the lighting in this room it was really important to create a really warm kind of layered approach I removed there was a central pendant when we moved in which I actually removed um I I think central pendants canut beautiful for decoration um but in here I didn't I knew I'd never have it on and I just wanted to really focus the lighting on wall lights and lights over the pictures and lamps um I think lighting is probably next to fabric and pattern my favorite aspect of design so um yeah I've got some really pretty wall lights um with this kind of shell background and I had these Shades made need again little pop of yellow to pick up on the yellow that you can see sort of throughout the room um I get a lot of my lamps from eBay um this is an Italian uh over here it's an Italian quite interesting lamp and for me the kind of more crazy and quirky the lamp the better I think it's a really nice way of bringing personality to scheme um and I love the softness of pleated lamp Shades um I use them a lot even in the kitchen um throughout the house cuz they just create a really kind of soft warm glow um the lamp shades here on these lamps are from fermoy and again I've used their lamp shades a lot they're just beautiful and soft and have really lovely diffused light which come through I think I I think in terms of mixing patterns together that's something which I get asked about a lot and there aren't really any hard and fast rules cuz I have some quite different patterns um in here I think um here we've got a really similar print but in different colors for example so that works really well any floral with a stripe and you'll see this repeated throughout the house um it I just think is a great combination because it just offsets the kind of floral frilly aspect um so again I've got a stripe here um but also I like mixing different size prints so if you have a large print on say your drapes you could do much smaller print um on cushions so yes it is instinctual but I wouldn't um go for like say two same size really similar prints I like to mix them and that really helps with a sense of layering as well in a room um but yeah you'll see a lot of stripe and floral because you just can't really go wrong and actually this cushion is is a stripe with a floral um and and yeah I just love these tassels which again you'll see throughout the house so let's go into The Snug um which is through here come with [Music] me so welcome to our snug um this has gone from when we first moved in it was the least used room room in the house and now I think aside from the kitchen it's the most used room in the house um it was a playroom and my kids are now 18 15 and 10 so I knew it wasn't going to be a playroom as such but I wanted it to be a family space um it used to have a big chimney breast in the middle which kind of changed the proportions and made it a bit awkward so we removed the chimney breast totally and put in these two big big steel beams but this room is just blessed with such high ceilings I knew that that wouldn't really be an issue and you would barely notice them because yeah they're just crazily High ceilings I think these the ceilings are the highest in the whole house um and I replaced the chimy breast with this in orous built-in unit um I wanted to create a focal point there's no fireplace or natural focal point in this room I knew it wanted to be a TV room and I just I mean there are lots of very ways to hide TVs but sometimes I just think you know we're a family we watch TV let's just own it and put it in a a lovely piece of joinery and they painted this I'm not sure if you can capture it on camera but it's like a lovely gloss blue and the gloss kind of bounces the light around the room it's quite a dark room um so that's why I chose the gloss um just to add a bit of reflection and light um yeah the drapes are really tall in here and I chose this lovely kind of soft lemon yellow I just wanted this room to feel really easy to be in and I did play with going like really dark and cozy which I might do at some point but I just wanted it to feel just really relaxing um and just very informal um and to that end on this wall at the back we have this like collection of artwork which we've built up over yeah kind of 20 years a lot of this art work was in our previous home and because it was a lot smaller our previous homes there was a lot of little pieces which just seemed to be lost on the walls of this house so I decided to Cate everything and just I've got everything here from like kids pictures to some really lovely artist to plates which I've collected on eBay um and some photographs um but it just adds to the informality and kind of relaxed aspect of this room um and then the sofa fits all of us pretty much um it's quite rare these days that we're all in one place um cuz I have teenagers who are all over the place um but yeah it's just really really nice place to relax this room we tend to We tend to entertain either in the kitchen and dining room or in the reception room um I think because yeah I think probably the way this is laid out really lends itself to kind of lounging around and watching TV so this room is really reserved for sort of hanging out really let's go to the next room I [Music] think so I'm going to show you my little powder room um or WC as we call it and the this house really lacked a downstairs toilet it's a big house and when we did um the major part of the renovation of this house which was about six years ago we knew we wanted to install a downstairs toilet and I just really didn't want to have a little tiny Pokey downstairs Lou we've got the space to make it quite big and uh I had this wallpaper in mind I always wanted to use um in this kind of space and it's called strawberries by col and sun um and it's just so pretty and we added some paneling at the bottom just to make it practical and uh so it just gets uh a little less wear and tear um the ceiling is painted green and I just wanted it feel really all-encompassing this room um if it had been white it would have been a really different experience um there's a stripy blind again with a pink trim um and this offsets the kind of floral pattern and I think probably the sink is one of my favorite things in the house it was a bit of a Splurge but I just love it and every day I appreciate [Music] it so this is our kitchen Diner and this is where we carried out the most work in the house and what I fell in love with about this house when we saw it 10 years ago was the stained glass and this really unusual Bay configuration of the doors at the back um the only issue with this room was that the side of the house wasn't here so we installed that glazed uh roof pitched glass that you can see um and actually this Rim finished here where the steel was so it was a great space but it was really long and narrow and really dark so decided to um to insert the steel and extend this this uh glazing outwards and it's just really serve to flood the whole room with light um and sun is coming through to really show you what you mean what we mean and I wanted it to feel really natural I didn't want it to feel like an addition I wanted to yeah really have it in keeping with the nature of the of the house and the original cornering was here when we came and and I wanted it to feel almost like an aerie like a really traditional Conservatory so instead of kind of doing big glazed walls we added these big Windows these sash traditional windows and um yeah I'm really happy with it because it's very hard with London kitchen extensions not to make them feel like super modern and contemporary um so having this timber frame glazing was really key to making sure that um it was in keeping with the rest of the house um so yeah so this has had a big transformation the kitchen was at the back we moved the kitchen um along this wall here um I was really Keen to have no wool units in this Central space um I love decorative objects we actually do use everything on the Shelf so it's not just for decoration um the bowls the cups the glasses it's all a bit of a muddle but it's just I love it it works and it because we use it it kind of doesn't collect dust and there aren't many places to have decorative items in kitchens so it's really nice to have some open shelving um the color of the units was actually inspired by the glazing um so that kind of sea green seaf foam green is one of my favorite colors um so yeah we painted the kitchen in this I just knew it would be timeless because because it works so well the original stained glass um and we added these super pretty little um brass shell handles they're from Arc Martin um and the other really important thing to talk about in the kitchen I think is the island so the island is just literally like a table I mean it's got loads of storage in it but it doesn't have a hob it doesn't have a sink and I really played with like should we put the sink here um but actually I wanted it to feel like a piece of furniture so it's on raised legs so you can see the floor go all the way through um and sometimes Islands can feel really kind of chunky and blocky and I wanted it to feel really elegant um and I wanted you to see the whole aspect of the room kind of through the island which is why we raised it on the leg so the kids often have their breakfast here but it's just a great prep space and it also means you don't have your sink with all you're washing up and all pans and things on so it's just going of clean and um yeah I just just love it we've got quartz on the top because I wasn't allowed marble the one thing my family were like you can't have marble but in my next Incarnation I will have marble but it's a pretty good um it's it's a pretty good replacement for marble it's like a quartz and it's really durable and I had this OG Edge put on the island as well because I thought that it made it feel a a little bit more like a piece of furniture and that contrasts with the edge which is a clean Square Edge on the kitchen because again we are blessed with really tall ceilings in this kitchen um I didn't want to have any spotlights and that was quite contentious again with my husband at the time because he's a big cook he was really worried about not having enough light um so we did a range of different lighting there was no W uh ceiling lights um spotlights at all we've got these three pendants which give you really good task lighting over the island and then um I've got these wool scones with long arms and they give you task lighting over the island um but really importantly I think in kitchens people forget about the lowlevel lighting so um over in the corner here I have this quite unusual decorative really large lamp we have that on all the time it's lovely for the evenings it's lovely when you're eating your evening meal um I've also got another table lamp over here in the corner and in fact I've got another lamp I've got a lot of lamps in here I've got another this really cute little vintage lamp on the Shelf but it really means you do not miss those spotlights and in some kitchens where the ceiling is lower you can't get away from them and you need them but um yeah I just knew that we could get away with all these different layers of lighting which is just much softer and warmer but actually really practical as well in terms of task lighting so my husband was worried he'd have to kind of make dinner with a head torch uh but that's definitely not necessary okay so this um I created this little kind of inbuilt sofa um I wanted somewhere where the family could kind of sit and chat there were I was going to do an actual sofa here which and then when I saw the space I thought it might lend itself better to something that was built in and um I did this sculp seem to be everywhere now but I did do this about six years ago and I can't quite remember where I saw the conet but I just loved it and I wanted to make it just an interesting pretty kind of vignette from this side of the kitchen um so yeah I mean people lying here teenagers lying here with a hangover we sit here with a coffee and a breakfast and it's a really nice aspect because you can see the island you can see out to the Garden um the dog sits here it's very well used and um a nice kind of I love bringing some soft additions to kitchens with so many hard services so it was a nice opportunity to bring in some color and fabric um and this is one of my favorite paintings in the house it's really kind of whimsical um it's from an online store called Arty um and the colors of the circus kind of go so well in the room so I'm an interior designer and I think when it comes to designing your home it can be quite tricky as an interior designer I can walk into lots of different places and immediately see where I think the property should go or um develop the aesthetic of the client but because we see so many beautiful things sometimes it's quite hard to actually hone in on your own specific style but I think we have quite chaotic family life and while I really I mean I love color and pattern I wanted it to be done in quite a sympathetic calming way for this house um so while there are lots of different colors you'll see throughout the home they're often quite muted and soft um sometimes the color is brought through artwork um but yeah I think I mean I'm always thinking about how I could change things obviously and I may well change things up but I think I wanted a continuity of a a color palette which is really inspired by the original house so the stain glass but also the garden um and I can show you the garden now because the palette there is just so pretty and soft and green and so many of the colors from the garden come through to the [Music] house this is our our garden um which is actually quite a good size for a London Garden we're really really lucky um we rebuilt the wall at the back um but otherwise it's more or less kind of how we found it we did some planting when we first arrived a few years ago and I really wanted it to feel like a really kind of country garden in the city so lots of roses it's a really summer garden um green lots of different shades of green and there's lots of layers to it so there's trees tall trees small trees it's a work in progress um It's not finished um but um I love going to antique fairs so I'm always collecting like these kind of French tables so over here is one of my mean it's really kind of rusty but I love it and I put on my pots there so yeah it's one of my favorite things is kind of just being in the garden I feel like it's it's not work to me whereas sometimes I feel because I'm in Interiors all the time doing stuff in the house can feel an extension of that but I really find being in the garden just really calming and um it's a lovely kind of mindful place for me to be I love it um so yes a lot of the colors inside the house I wanted to to really marry with the colors in the [Music] garden okay so welcome to our bedroom this is the principal bedroom in the house and it's not the largest bedroom but it is the most peaceful because it overlooks the garden so I knew I wanted this to be bedroom um it's really light um it's just got a really lovely view um onto all the back Gardens of our road which I love having a nosy in um and we did quite a lot of work to this room um we installed these wardrobes which are actually supposed to be for both of us but ended up just being for me my husband has his stuff in the spare room um and I lined them with this pretty fabric because I find that that just helps to stop that kind of Blocky feel um that these big buil-in wardrobes could have I want it just to look sort of pretty and soft um the fireplace was here originally so again we were really lucky to have that um and this fabric on the curtains um was really key to the scheme and it's one of my favorite prints it's from um gp&j Baker and actually I found it on eBay as a Remnant um and unfortunately well actually fortunately it I didn't quite have enough so um I decided to kind of top entail it with this pink velvet at the top and the bottom um which is actually a really sweet feature um and it has this kind of grand tassels from Samu and Sun's but yeah this is just such a sort of typical traditional print and it's an unusual colorway I just love the kind of soft pinks and greens and the birds um and then I knew I wanted wool paper in here but I knew it also needed to be calming for a bedroom so we have this like really subtle pinstripe um wallpaper from kfax and Fowler that sits really nicely against the curtains um this is a really nice place to sit and contemplate live Looking Over the Garden um it's this little mid-century sofa which I picked up for I mean about £50 I think in antiques Fair um quite a few years ago uh and then finally my dressing table is over here it has this really oversized kind of quite glamorous mirror from Julian chitest um and again that just reflects the garden so that's really nice to see that when you're sitting there um and it's got an interesting shape this is a bit of a crazy lamp it's kind of like a Regency Hollywood lamp which I got on eBay I I think for about 20 quid um and yeah it's just a really peaceful calm Haven away from the kids and we can go and see that on Suite next door because that's kind of in the space which is really nice because it means that the girls can't use it so we can go and have a look at that now [Music] this is our on Suite um bathroom um there wasn't room for a bath so to compensate for that we did a really big generous walk-in shower and this lovely vanity which isn't antique but it's got the feeling of a kind of French Parisian um vanity we used unlaced brass um which from water Monopoly which is I've tried use throughout the house it really develops this lovely aged patterer um which I think this gets better with age and I don't really I clean it but I don't clean it until it's shiny because I just love the pentation on it um the tiling is quite interesting the Tyler was yeah very very patient but I wanted it to have this almost like a 1940s European kind of feel in here I want it to be tiled from top to bottom and it has this pencil tile across the top and a Dayo and it also has a skirting um and then the checkerboard floor kind of gives it quite a glamorous feel um and then the shape of the mirrors is quite kind of art deco the mirrors are from um an English company called vau um yeah and it's just it's a real Sanctuary actually this bathroom I absolutely love it so this the bathroom is the original size um it had like a cubicle in which I wanted to remove so I wanted it to feel more open so it felt like it didn't feel as spacious as this so we actually built instead of a built-in cubicle we built this half wall which is really successful in terms of creating a shower space but keeping the sense of space and size um and yeah it's just much more aesthetically pleasing than kind of lots of doors of glass [Music] um so if you come upstairs the first of the bedrooms to show you is my youngest daughter's room so come in so this is my youngest daughter Sky bedroom um and she well we worked on this together this room she is is an interior designer in the make and she was really Keen to be involved so um to give her an element of choice and often do this with my young clients is it's really important they feel involved and they're making decisions but I try to give them edited options so I was actually really pleasantly surprised that she chose this wallpaper which is a William Morris um design uh and called Daisy um which is the name of one of my other daughters but it's just really classic and I love that blue and white um color scheme and we really took that and ran with it so we did the stripy Blind and again another stripe of floral and it has a really pretty little bead trim um we did obviously lots of blue and white cushions and the paint work is all in this kind of like a Wedgewood blue which is really nice the wardrobe um is again in this sort of Wedgewood blue and has lovely kind of white trim um and again I've added fabric to the back of back of the doors just to bring in some softness um and the same fabric is on this really cute little lamp which is from anthropology and we had this lamp shade made for it and in fact this is quite interesting this section of the room because she's only 10 and I knew that she would be growing in so she'd want some kind of dressing area so there wasn't room for it because of the radiator so I decided to build this kind of shelf which almost like a console with a mirror on it so when she's older she can use this as her her Dressing Table um but other pieces in the room which are quite important so we did bring in some yellow to kind of throw in there with with the blue and blue and white and um make it feel kind of youthful and fun this is a piece we found on eBay and I had painted um and then very importantly her bed which um is quite quite a thing we had this lovely canopy made cuz she is only 10 this will be really easy to take down when she's older um but she loves it and she loves kind of going in and feeling really cozy and enclosed and it's got this beaded trim on it again um she's probably got the best bed in the house actually it's the most comfortable um and she actually does make it like this every day with every pillow I can't imagine where she gets that from so we've got oh my goodness we've got one two three four five fireplaces in the house so this isn't a working fireplace but it is this is a really particularly pretty fireplace actually when we bought the house these tiles were the original tiles were really cracked and sort of falling apart so we did actually replace the tiles on the half and on the sides but yeah the the fireplace is original and we're just really lucky because it does really give the room so much personality and character um and a really nice focal point as [Music] well this is my middle daughter's bedroom Tessa's room um and we're right at the top of the house here so um it's very peaceful um it's really really high so you have this like amazing view of all the gardens um down below um because this was an addition this is a loft room that was added on it doesn't have a fireplace it doesn't have the kind of natural character so we needed to add it so we added it through the wallpaper um and actually again she chose this she was very specific um but um yeah she luckily chose this really soft subtle floral print and this is from kfax and Fowler and actually recently did a makeover because she inherited this iron bed and while I love the traditional look of iron beds they're actually really uncomfortable to sit up so um to sit up against so we had this headboard made and kind of tied on which is a really kind of budget friendly way of making it sort of soft and usable and and then we also did this matching Valance and underneath here there's oh all her socks and storage you can see down there um and this really pretty quilt um we added as well and she's a big kind of sewer and collector so we added a bookshelf for all her bits and pieces and this really pretty vanity which actually is just from Ikea but we found this really cute um brass mirror on here um and it's just a really she's she's quite a manic character so I was quite surprised that she chose such a sort of soft peaceful scheme um so yeah I was really pleased with her choice so now this and the bathroom so we there's it's strange because there's lots of little steps in between so there's three floors but then in between each floor there are like steps leading up so there's almost like like mezzanines so it's great because it really gives a sense of space so nobody feels like they're kind of next door to each other so my other daughter's room in fact my husband's office which we'll go to in a minute is on the same floor but it's so far apart and up these kind of mini stairs that you get this amazing sense of space which is why we just loved the house because it's just unusual in a Victorian house house to really have that sense of space with the stairs and the width of the hallways as well um so yeah we're really really lucky to be here for [Music] sure so we're still on the top floor here um and we had this like huge vast wall which I just wanted to do something with it just ended up having loads of handprints on it when it was painted so I decided to put this wallpaper which is a vintage print from William Morris and it just serves to give this hallway some identity always can be really tricky to decorate because they can just feel really transitional and there's no focal points so I created one really with this wallpaper and it's so good at hiding handprints and dirt I mean I just yeah whereas before it was it was a bit of an issue and we also this was a um an antique mirror from our old house and there wasn't really anywhere to put it but actually it looks quite nice here and again gives the hallway some a focal point so coming up to my husband's [Music] office come through here so this is the smallest room in the house um but it is a lovely room it's very very light and bright um when my husband does work from home this is where he works because it's right at the top of the house away from the chaos um and we painted it this is a color I'd been wanting to use and it felt like this was a right room to use in it's called smoked trout by phoh and ball and it's this lovely kind of Dusky terracotta pink um and because this is a small room I just thought let's just go for it and although it's quite dark it doesn't actually feel dark uh and I found this desk which again I had painted um in my favorite color um it's blessed with a really cute little fireplace in here it's got a chair um but although this is primarily primarily his office I needed it to also act as a guest room so in the corner I had made this um I guess it's a day bed uh and it's quite clever cuz it looks like a kind of sofa um I had the headboard made in a fabric from mulbury home and had it kind of cut into the eaves so it looks really purposeful um with these bolsters either side but it's actually like a day bed so you can pull it out and it turns into a double bed um but when it's not used it's just quite a nice place to read and escape from the madness um the rug on the floor is actually part of a collaboration which I recently launched with a company called Bombay Sprout and um I designed several rugs um with them for a collection uh and I named them after my daughters so this is called the Tessa rug uh and it's in this lovely like mustard and obene colorway and it just sits really well in this room it really adds another layer of color and pattern and coziness so the desk I've really struggled to I wanted it to be an antique but I just couldn't find the right size so I actually found it uh it was bare wood and it was from a company called scrumble Goosey um in the UK I think they do ship um International as well but the nice thing about it is that you can have it painted any color so I actually got them to paint it with this kind of um like Swedish antique detail with the with the blue line and it just fitted perfectly in the space it's actually really generous sized size desk it's actually a really lovely place um to work up here I'm not quite sure why my office isn't up here um cuz it's so nice and quiet but yeah it's um it's really lovely lovely space to work [Music] [Music] [Applause] so what makes a house a home I think the answer to that has to be the people in it um to make a beautiful house is one thing but to really live in it and to have your own pieces and to make it feel personal to the people who live in it really make it a home thanks for watching go to homeworthy tocom for exclusive content and shopping guides

Channel: Homeworthy

Views: 57,896

Keywords: homeworthy, house tour, home tour, london style, english style, british style, english decor, colorful decor, maximalist decor, maximalism interiors, interior design, interior decor, renovation inspo, kitchen inspo, garden inspo, feminine bathroom, girls room, layered decor, antiques, townhouse inspo, architectural digest, house beautiful, veranda, quintessence

Id: PRRreHu4Ta8

Length: 41min 24sec (2484 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024