A bold use of colour and pattern enlivens a Victorian terrace in London
The interior designer Sarah Vanrenen has long been drawn by colour and pattern, as can be seen in her design projects, textiles, and the lampshades and furniture she designs. She puts it down to a lifetime of travelling (back and forth to South Africa as a child, and now to India, Turkey and Morocco on research and buying trips for clients) and the influence of her mother, the English decorator, Penny Morrison. And also an innate sense: ‘I crave colour,’ she says. Testament to this is the jewel-hued North Kensington house she shares with her husband Grant, their miniature ‘London’ lurcher Fly – a Bedlington-Italian greyhound cross – and, on occasion, Grant’s two teenage sons.
Sarah and Grant bought the house, a Victorian terraced ‘two up, two down’, in 2015. ‘It was almost falling down, with tiny rooms and plastic windows, but it was what we wanted, as it hadn’t been done up cheaply by a developer,’ says Sarah. She saw its potential as a family home they could live in during the week (weekends are spent in their Wiltshire farmhouse, featured in the March 2017 issue of House & Garden) and which Sarah could use for meetings with clients. She believes a house must be ‘functional, have good storage and good light, and serve as a backdrop for personal effects collected over time. This helps a house look lived in’. It is an end state that many would have struggled to imagine before she set to work.
The first step was an almost complete re-build, with the help of architect Jeremy Hamerton, with whom Sarah works regularly. ‘Every wall in the house came out, except the façade and the rear walls,’ she explains. Only necessary ground-floor walls were reinstated, creating one large room on two levels, lit naturally from both ends. A side return was added to the kitchen extension, providing light from above and creating a dining area that seats 10 people. The floors were dug out and dropped, and the ceilings lowered in turn – enabling a combined second bedroom and dressing room to be built above the kitchen, and a third bedroom and shower room to be fitted into the attic. The main bedroom and adjoining bathroom is now the size of both of the previous small bedrooms, and is also lit from both ends. Finally the garden – ‘which was a mud pit’ – was designed by Sarah to be as low maintenance as possible and is predominantly paved, except for raised beds around the edges. There is an outdoor fireplace at one end, which also operates as a barbecue. The garden benefits from the afternoon sun and in summer is used as another entertaining space. The project took just over a year and the result proves Sarah’s point: ‘From the outside, these houses look small – but, inside, they’re actually much bigger.’
This optical illusion is also due to Sarah’s talent for maximizing every last square inch, using both technique and trick to achieve it. ‘In a London house, you have to do this.’ A hall would have felt cramped, so the downstairs loo under the stairs doubles as a repository for the paraphernalia of coats, helmets and boots, and the front door opens directly into the drawing room. A banquette in the dining area means ‘you can push the table up against it – if there were chairs on both sides, you’d want to centre the table in the room’. The bedrooms have built-in cupboards, tapering when necessary to the windows to avoid blocking the light. And Sarah does not believe in putting small furniture in small spaces. Her motto is ‘Be bold!’. Oversized lamps sourced from auctions or flea markets are paired with shades made from antique textiles found on her travels, floor-to-ceiling curtains hang at nearly every window, sofas and armchairs are generous and deep, and there is almost a surfeit of good-sized cushions.
The furnishings act as both vehicle and veil for Sarah’s love of pattern and colour. In the drawing room, a dark aubergine-amethyst gloss by Papers and Paints on the walls is kept from being overwhelming by lots of well-framed art and by the fact that everything else is so pale. Patterned dhurries mark out different areas, lit separately by a collection of lamps with dimmer switches. ‘I love creating atmosphere,’ Sarah says.
In the kitchen and dining area, emerald-green cabinets, concealing two fridges and two freezers, are mirrored by green velvet dining chairs and offset by an antique Turkish rug, pink cushions on the banquette and a pale oatmeal shade by Papers and Paints on the walls. Upstairs, wallpapers meet complementary patterns on headboards, curtains, suzani bedcovers and Moroccan-tiled bathroom floors, interspersed with blocks of colour in the form of ochre linen curtains on a four-poster, or an antique armchair reupholstered in pale pink linen. ‘I can see when there’s enough pattern and I’ll break it up,’ explains Sarah. ‘With clients, it’s about helping them understand how patterns can work with other patterns and colours, and giving them the confidence to use as much as they would like. However, when it came to my own house, I could be absolutely true to myself’.
Tim Beddow1/7By the chimneypiece are two lamps from One Kings Lane in New York.
Tim Beddow2/7A textured linen from Peter Dunham Textiles was used for the blind in this bedroom, which doubles as a dressing room.
Tim Beddow3/7Popham Design supplied the floor tiles. Sarah topped a walnut commode with marble to create a basin unit.
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