A deep dive into the near perfect scheme for Rose Uniacke's bedroom & bathroom

I fell for this house years before we bought it. There was a magic," says the interior designer and furniture dealer Rose Uniacke, of her house in Pimlico. "But it was too large, too damaged, and most definitely too big a project. My husband, David, and I walked away; it would be madness to take it on. But it never left me. I thought often about how I might tame its space just enough to become liveable. Three years later, it was still there. Nobody else would touch it, and we took the plunge."

Built by the architect George Morgan for the Scottish portraitist James Rannie Swinton in 1860, the house is unusual for its surroundings on the Thomas Cubitt-designed Warwick Square; a low brick house centred around Swinton's painting studio and a gallery space with a domed glass roof. Later, when the house was owned by the artist Iain Macnab, it had a new life as the Grsovenor School of Modern Art. Reflecting on that period, Rose notes how "the building looked so inviting, spacious, and open. A beautiful shell, and, in it, artistic endeavour. For me it was important to keep a sense of that atmosphere."

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After a long post-war phase as an exhibition space, institutionalised and bland, there was much for Rose and David to do: stripping it down, reordering the structure and restoring the intricate plasterwork. It was a deeply important phase for Rose. "I was determined to retain -and I hope you can feel it-a real sense of the empty house, a sense of the space in its very simplest form. But it couldn't be cold or daunt­ing or too grand, and it had to welcome." In the structural work, Rose brought in the architect Vincent Van Duysen to help, who had the idea of turning the old portrait gallery into an indoor garden, laid out by Tom Stuart Smith. "It feels wonderful now, very elegant, thoroughly bedded in, and as if it has always been so."

The interiors of the house are grounded in beautiful materials. Reclaimed eighteenth- and nineteenth-century floorboards from Belgium set the tone, while English furniture of the same periods form the "backbone of the collection." Soft light is provided by period lanterns, mixed with more playful later pieces. "Art was an integral part of the whole," explains Rose. "If I look at the house as a large canvas for self-expression, the art, its beauty and how it relates to the whole, plays a vital role. Sometimes it is literally the very strength of the room, sometimes just a lighter ges­ture or something playful. But it's always a display of beauty and emotion, an expression."

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Here we take a look at two of the upstairs rooms, the main bedroom and bathroom, generous, expansive spaces that perfectly demonstrate Rose's distinctive style, as she explains their decorative schemes.