The best UK museums for interiors lovers
We all need a little inspiration when it comes to decorating, and nothing fires the imagination like wandering around a good museum, whether it's a house once owned by someone interesting, or galleries' worth of historic objects. Figures like William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Sir John Soane have had their interiors preserved for posterity, and London is full of museums that take you through the history of design. Whether you want to see fine examples of Modernist, Arts & Crafts, or Georgian interiors, we have rounded up the most beautiful museums in the UK for decoration devotees.
1/13Sir John Soane's Museum | Pitzhanger House, London
Sir John Soane was one of the foremost architects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and also a prolific collector of art and antiquities. His house on Lincoln's Inn Fields has been lovingly preserved after he bequeathed it to the nation upon his death. Filled with a staggering collection of beautiful things, from Hogarth's series, The Rake's Progress, to an Egyptian sarcophagus, the house is also an ingeniously-designed monument to Neo-Classical style. More recently, the architect's onetime country house Pitzhanger (now in the middle of Ealing), has been restored to bring it as close as possible to its Soaneian style, with an art museum attached to boot.
soane.org | pitzhanger.org.uk
2/132 Willow Road, London
For devotees of mid-century modern interiors, 2 Willow Road, former home of the Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger, is an essential destination. Goldfinger was responsible for some of London's most recognisable Brutalist landmarks, including Trellick Tower in west London and Balfron Tower in Poplar. He designed three houses on Willow Road in Hampstead, one of which he lived in himself, and which is now run by the National Trust. Ian Fleming was one of the local residents angered by the new houses, and named James Bond's adversary Goldfinger after the architect in retribution. The spacious interiors are marked by huge windows, wood panelling, and an impressive collection of 20th-century art including works by Bridget Riley and Henry Moore.
nationaltrust.org.uk
3/13The William Morris Gallery, London
The Arts & Crafts movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries changed the world of interior design forever, and the work of its leading light William Morris shows no signs of going out of favour. A few of the houses once inhabited by Morris, including Red House in southeast London and Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds, are still run as museums, but the most extensive collection of his work lives at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. The extensive Georgian house was the young Morris' family home from 1848 to 1856.
wmgallery.org.uk
Matthew Smith4/13David Parr House, Cambridge
After a nondescript house in Cambridge was discovered to hide a marvellous Arts & Crafts interior by the artist-painter and decorator David Parr, two years of restoration has brought it back to life in all its former glory. Parr worked for Cambridge decorative arts firm F. R. Leach & Sons, which carried out commissions in large houses and churches for the period’s key designers and architects such as William Morris and George Bodley, and his decoration of his own house reflects his immersion in this style.
davidparrhouse.org
©National Trust Images/ Cristian Barnett5/13575 Wandsworth Road
This unassuming house on the Wandsworth Road was once the home of Khadambi Asalache, a Kenyan born poet, trained architect, philosopher and civil servant, the house is filled with 25 years' worth of remarkable carving and handmade decoration. Nothing prepares you for the private and exquisite world beyond the door, where giant lace cobwebs of wooden fretwork sprawl from ceiling to floor. The house is currently closed for renovations, but set to open again in May 2023. nationaltrust.org.uk
6/13The Museum of the Home, London
Unique in being devoted to the entire subject of domestic interiors rather than to the work of any one designer, the recently renovated and rebranded Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) in east London is the perfect place to get an overview of British trends in decorating from 1600 to the present day. The museum takes you through a series of decorated spaces illustrating the gradual changes that took place over the centuries. As well as this historical focus, the museum aims to “reveal and rethink the ways we live and think about home”, so expect some thought-provoking questions.
geffrye-museum.org.uk
Paul Massey7/13Charleston, Sussex
Nestled in bucolic Sussex gardens, the seventeenth-century exterior of Charleston house - the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant - belies the riot of imaginative decoration inside; a legacy of its function as artistic residence to the Bloomsbury Group, many of whose portraits still hang on the walls. The house is now a museum and gallery, is the only completely preserved example of a Bloomsbury interior in existence, and bears witness to the extraordinary period of creativity of this loose grouping of artists and intellectuals in their 1920s and 1930s heyday. It's more than just a relic of times past though; the recently expanded gallery stages exhibitions of contemporary art and the house holds an annual literary festival in the summer.
charleston.org.uk- 8/13
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
Kettle's Yard, the University of Cambridge's contemporary art museum, is surely one of the most ecumenical of all galleries, embracing beautiful objects and artworks from a range of places, periods and provenances.The house was left to the University by Jim and Helen Ede, who lived there between 1958 and the latter's death in 1973. They filled it with art, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and beautifully-crafted furniture, creating a spare, harmonious aesthetic that has been influential throughout the design world. The house has always been to some extent a museum - Jim Ede used to hold open afternoons in which he gave students tours of his collection.
kettlesyard.co.uk
9/13The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
A must-visit for any lovers of the decorative arts, the V&A in South Kensington (there is also an outpost in Dundee, a Wedgwood museum in Stoke on Trent, a Young V&A branch in Bethnal Green, and a huge centre in east London set to open in 2024) is a treasure trove of beautiful things. Although the tentpole exhibitions tend to focus on fashion, a meander through the permanent galleries will open up whole worlds of textiles, ceramics and furniture from a myriad different spaces and times.
vam.ac.uk
10/13Leighton House, London
This former residence of the Victorian painter Frederic Leighton is the absolute antithesis of the traditional artist's garret, and even today, it can easily keep pace with the most elaborate of the Chelsea mansions in the surrounding area. In the 30 years that Leighton lived there, he embarked on a sustained mission of elaboration and expansion, turning it into a 'private palace of art'. The Arab hall, with its intricate mosaic floors, golden dome and walls covered with Islamic tiles is jaw-dropping. It has recently re-opened after a brilliant renovation - read what we took away from the renovation here.
rbkc.org.uk
11/13The Mackintosh House, Glasgow
Charles Rennie Mackintosh's elegant, spare designs are some of the most recognisable of the early twentieth-century, indelibly associated with the Art Nouveau style but also an important influence on Modernism. Like William Morris before him, Mackintosh was interested in designing entire buildings–from the architecture to the furniture–in his own style, but few of these now remain intact. The University of Glasgow has rebuilt the interiors of Mackintosh's own house a few doors down from where it originally stood, and the result is a fascinating insight into his austere, delicate aesthetic.
gla.ac.uk
12/13The Design Museum, London
Founded by Sir Terence Conran in 1989, this Kensington museum is devoted to contemporary design, from Underground signs to record players. Graphics and logo lovers will find plenty to entertain them here, but we thoroughly enjoy looking back over the history of the objects we use everyday and seeing how they have come to be.
designmuseum.org
13/13Dennis Severs' House, London
Dennis Severs, a Californian who made his home in Spitalfields, transformed this town house where he lived into an extraordinary still life: something between a museum piece and a film set. He imagined it as the home of a family of Huguenot weavers and chronicled their history across the series of rooms, each decorated in different styles from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Little touches such as half-eaten food and burning candles add to the lived-in effect.
dennissevershouse.co.uk
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