A Victorian terrace in London.
A Victorian terrace in London with the layered, comfortable feel of a country house
Interior designer Charlotte Boundy has brought warmth and colour (courtesy of a few dream moodboards) to her house in Shepherds Bush
After ten years living in a charming two-bedroom former workmen's cottage in Kensal Rise, the time had come for Charlotte Boundy to move on. It wasn’t that she had gone off the house or wanted to try a new area, but the interior designer in her was hankering for a project all of her own. ‘There is always compromise when you work on clients' houses and I relished having a completely free hand,’ explains Charlotte, who launched her eponymous design studio in 2016 after 15 years working in creative project management for the likes of Christie’s and Rose Uniacke. ‘I’d built up a few dream moodboards and was just desperate to put them to good use,’ she admits, laughing.
The hunt began and Charlotte found just the ticket: a three-bedroom Victorian terrace on a lovely, quiet road in Shepherd’s Bush, with a double living room, an already extended eat-in kitchen, original pine shutters framing the doorway that now leads down into the kitchen, and enough bedrooms upstairs for one to become her office. ‘I was outgrowing my previous house and I knew this would give me the space I needed to work from home,’ explains Charlotte, who bought the house two years ago. ‘Although it isn’t a huge house, I loved that it still felt generous.’ Best of all though was its white walls, which were just crying out for layers to be added. ‘It excited me because it was a brilliant blank canvas,’ says Charlotte.
Lorford’s ‘Elmstead Sofa’, upholstered in GP & J Baker’s Thornham Spice (a lucky win from an NHS charity auction during lockdown), brings pattern into the room, as does a lampshade from Nushka Interiors. The ebonised gilt antique mirror, which hangs above a Portland stone fireplace from Jamb, was bought years ago from Lillie Road.
Although the moodboards kept growing, Charlotte decided to live in the house for a good six months before starting work on it. ‘I wanted to figure out how I would use the house,’ Charlotte explains. First up was the conversion of the modest third bedroom – used, in fact, by the previous owners as a walk-in-wardrobe – into Charlotte’s office: a window was added on the back wall overlooking the garden, a half-glazed door was installed and a cupboard was fitted in the corner and painted, like the rest of the woodwork in the room, in ‘Reddish Brown’ by Farrow & Ball. ‘It’s such a great colour that I could have slathered it throughout the house,’ says Charlotte, whose approach to decorating is all about bringing warmth and colour into spaces. Next up was onto the dinky bathroom, which Charlotte meticulously rejigged to make the most of the small footprint. ‘It doesn’t bother me that it’s so tiny, because it has exactly what I need,’ she says of the pink and white space, which features a wall of zellige tiles, a pretty Pierre Frey shower curtain and a neat ‘La Chapelle’ sink from Lefroy Brooks.
The decoration of the house all started from the chocolate box of a guest bedroom, where Charlotte had the walls papered in a pretty floral paper – ‘Bengali’ by Braquenié – and finished with a neat red trim that runs around the top of the walls. ‘I’d already fallen in love with this wallpaper and knew I wanted to use it in the house,’ explains Charlotte, who tempered its prettiness with a George III chest of drawers and a delicious burgundy velvet headboard. For Charlotte’s own bedroom – a generously sized room that runs across the width of the front of the house – she indulged her four-poster bed fantasies with a more modest half tester and a headboard from Ensemblier, which are now adorned with more pretty florals from Nicholas Herbert, along with a ticking from The Cloth Shop. It is a wonderfully restful space, with walls in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Setting Plaster’ and a simple fireplace, the surround of which Charlotte had painted in the same colour. Underfoot, Charlotte opted for sisal, which she has also used for the guest bedroom, her office, the landing and the stairs.