Our top stories of 2021: Studio Peake infuses a tiny Georgian house in London with patina and character

The constraints of a project can be the true test of an interior designer's skill; when it's not possible to rip everything out and start again, it takes real ingenuity to create something beautiful within the framework of existing imperfections. That was the case with this pretty Georgian terrace in south London, owned by a young couple who moved in straight after their honeymoon, and called in Sarah to help them make it a playful, colourful but above all comfortable place to live. It was Sarah's very first professional project, and therefore will always hold a special place in her heart.

The previous owners had embraced a dark industrial look, painting the floorboards black and neglecting the house's period charm, so much of the initial work went into bringing that character back, without completely stripping it down. For example, differing floor levels between the front and back of the house couldn't be fixed, and so Sarah brought in curving skirting boards to make the transition between them less jarring. Sarah replaced the skirting boards and cornices, doors and architraves, found elegant little radiators to match the scale of the house. The only major project was rewiring the house, so it benefitted from a complete lighting redesign with the help of designer Max Barlow.

MAY WE SUGGEST: A young designer's artful renovation of the ground floor flat of a Victorian terrace

The cleverest showcase for Sarah's policy of reuse and adaptation is the kitchen, where she took the decision not to rip the old cabinets out and start again. "There was no budget for a brand new kitchen," she explains, "and we liked the shape of the painted cabinets." The 'oak' laminate countertop had to go, of course, and the handles were all falling off, so with the help of contractors Portobello Painters, they dismantled the kitchen, repainted it, added new handles from Lassco, cut new worktops in Carrara marble and installed a new stone floor to replace the existing black lino. The glass cabinets were painstakingly restored by a french polisher, and the result is impeccably stylish. "I like that it’s not a new kitchen, and that it has a slight battered look to it" says Sarah.

An extension at the back of the house contains the kitchen, which leads off from the dining room on one side of the house; on the other side, the original sitting room also leads into the extension, where the owners have a TV room. A recent addition, the extension has none of the pleasant proportions of the Georgian original structure, nor the original floorboards, though it connects seamlessly to the front rooms. Again, Sarah took this drawback as an opportunity to adapt the design to the space. "We decided the best thing to do was to make this part of the house feel small and cosy," she says. To this end, she installed a full wall of joinery in the TV room making space for media, books and toys. "It gives the room purpose and meaning," she explains, "and creates the sense of a cosy nook rather than just a small room." Both the front and back sitting rooms are painted in a bright, cheerful yellow, and plentifully supplied with warm patterned textiles. Sarah also put in luxuriously thick curtains that match the curtains in the other, front half of the sitting room.

The original rooms at the front of the house needed less work; Sarah painted the floorboards a pale grey to lighten up the space, and enhanced the log burner in the sitting room with a smart, appropriately sized bardiglio marble chimneypiece from Jamb. The hallway that links the two front rooms was wallpapered in a delicate pale pattern that runs up the stairs to the landing. The owners' considerable collection of art is distributed throughout the rooms, and also continues upstairs from the hall upstairs. The structure on the first floor repeats that of the ground floor, with two bedrooms opening off the landing, their doorways directly opposite one another, so that standing in one bedroom you look straight across the landing into the other. To unify the space, the bedrooms share a colour palette - grey blues enlivened by pinks and blues in the textiles and accessories, which include Pierre Frey's bold 'Lasso' fabric for the curtains in the main bedroom, and a collection of Afghan hats above the headboard in the guest room.