A stylish Victorian house filled with enchanting colour schemes

In the search for a house, it's not uncommon to hear people say they're waiting for 'it', for that elusive something in a building that makes them want to sign on the dotted line there and then. For Chris Graves, the TV-executive-turned-interior-designer behind Clarence & Graves, that was the key element in his search for a new family house five years ago. The four-bedroom, late 1880s house near Strand on the Green, a pretty west London neighbourhood that winds along the river, had an immediate magic about it. Not only did it possess Chris' ideal layout, with a basement and a raised ground floor that would enable him to survey the outside world from an elevated position, but it had integrity, those all-important good bones that give a house its star quality.

“It hadn’t been touched since the mid-1970s,” explains Chris, “so there were magnolia walls and beige carpet, with pine cupboards and formica worktops in the kitchen. But there was height and light, with beautiful architraves and cornicing, working fireplaces and all the original floorboards; everything was hidden but intact.” Upon moving in, he set about the work – some major renovations and plenty of tweaking – that would make it into the perfect family home for himself, his partner (and creative collaborator) Jolene, their two children and Clarence the whippet.

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The main structural work took place on the lower ground floor, where the kitchen looked out onto the back garden through two relatively pokey sash windows. For Chris it was obvious that the back wall needed to be opened up to the garden, so he installed a glorious wall of pistachio green Crittall windows and dug out a sunken courtyard for them to open onto. The windows are certainly a showstopper, and it was the first time, apparently, that the installer had seen anyone choose a colour other than black or grey in twenty years. Colour, indeed, is immensely important throughout the house; Chris describes the kitchen as 'Wes Anderson meets Provence', and the softened down pastel tones so beloved of the film director make reappearances in many of the rooms.

The deVOL kitchen within the green windows is as lovely to look in on as the garden is to look out on. Dark cabinets and marble worktops are fresh and of the moment, while French cafe floor tiles lend an understated timelessness. The layout is clever, with the oven concealed in the island so it is not immediately obvious when you enter the room, and most controversially, a double sink in the chimneybreast. "Of course you would expect the hob to go there," says Chris, "but I like to be sociable when I cook, and I didn't want to have my back to the room. I was determined to put it on the island instead for a more convivial cooking experience" Most of the nuts and bolts of the kitchen are concealed in an enviable wall of joinery just beyond the kitchen, which hides endless storage space and unsightly appliances.

That placement of the hob and sink is emblematic of Chris' approach to interior design, which centres on facilitating what he calls the 'rituals of domestic life', the way you live in your house that makes it comfortable and personal to you. In another example of it, he has placed candle sconces on the staircase walls instead of electric ones, creating a peaceful ritual of candle lighting in the evenings that contributes to the slight Dickensian flavour of the house.