Inside a Beautifully Restored London Townhouse by Rebecca Constable

I'm Rebecca Constable, an interior designer, and this is my family home in London. Come on in! So we're in Finsbury Park in North London, and I love this part of London. It's got great parks, great shops, there's just lots going on. And we bought this home in 2016, just as I was about to have my first child. And we bought it from a family who'd actually moved in here 30 years beforehand, just as they were going to have their first child. And it was a lovely family home, but very knackered. And so we've been slowly doing it up for the last eight years. Let's go have a look in the kitchen. So this is the kitchen, and we did this about three years ago. And our main aim with this space was just to create a really functional and fun family space. So whenever I am designing a space, especially kitchens, the most important thing is that it works well for your family. So I spent ages thinking about how much cupboard space we needed, how it was going to flow, how I wanted the kids and us to eat as a family. And those were kind of like the main deciding factors when designing the kitchen. And then all the lovely stuff, the colours, the kind of pretty bits, that sort of all came second. We extended out into the garden here, so this used to be the side return. And because of the boundary wall, it meant that we've kind of got an angled kitchen. So we had to get bespoke cabinetry made to run along this side of the kitchen, because it's really deep at this end and really shallow at that end. And we had a lovely guy called Louis Baker who made most of the cabinetry in this house and most of the joinery, which I'll show you later. I knew really early on that I wanted to have a red kitchen, like a deep red kitchen. And there weren't that many around, but I feel like 2025, it's slightly a colour of the year. You're starting to see a few more red kitchens around. So it's a really classic colour that I absolutely love. And I didn't want to pick something that was too trendy, because you often find with trends that, although they're really fun in the moment, in a couple of years you get really bored of them. And that is the problem with trends. They come and they go, and often it can really date a space. And everything in here, we wanted to make sure that we'd still love it in 10 years, 20 years time. So we tried to use a lot of natural materials in this kitchen. So we've got oak floorboards, we've got oak frames in our kitchen, and then we've got this lovely quartzite worktop. And I love using natural stone and natural materials in my interior design projects. They do show signs of wear and tear, but I love that because it shows that somebody lives here. And we've got three very lively children, so you will definitely see the marks and the scratches, but I think that's what a family home should look like. When it came to the glazing in here, we knew we wanted to bring in as much natural light as possible, because we were going to be losing some of the light from the garden in that back room. So we put in this huge skylight that is, I think, about five metres long, and it just brings in light all throughout the day. And we also knew we wanted to have a picture window here. We didn't want to do the traditional bi-fold doors because it's England and it's not always sunny, but we love the idea of having a big window which you can open when it's warm, and this is everybody's favourite spot. We sit here in the morning to have a cup of coffee, or the kids love chilling out here at the end of the day. And we also added these double doors which open up into the garden. We work with Marek from Burson Architects on this project, who we've worked with on a number of other projects, and he chose these brilliant bricks from Petersen, and they're a Danish brand, and I just really love the kind of warm, soft hue to them. And I also love this brick detail that he designed here along the top. It just adds a little bit of something extra to a normal extension. So we're back in the kitchen now, and this is our dining area, and my main aim with the dining area was to have as much seating as possible. We've got three children, and we often have other families for dinner, so we have this built-in bench made by Louis, and it means we can just shove loads of kids on that side, and it also provides loads of storage for all their arts and crafts bits. This table is quite new actually, it's from Konk, who are a lovely furniture company in Bristol, and they hand-make all of their furniture there. And we decided to go for a trestle table here. Because of the banquette seating, it means that if you have a four-legged table, it's really hard to get in and sit down. And having a trestle leg just means it's really easy to just slip in and enjoy your meal. Again, we've gone for a natural oak for the table. I love using natural materials because they sort of show signs of wear and tear. Our old table had been here for 12 years, and although it was much-loved, it was definitely time for an upgrade. And similarly, for the island, we used a natural stone, which is a quartzite. It's a little bit more robust than marble, it doesn't stain as much, but again, it just has a really lovely natural finish to it. And you can see all the veining here, which is brilliant at hiding any marks and stains. So I love having artwork in the kitchen, I think every room needs a few pieces of art. These prints here are actually from Pepin Press, and they were just a cheap sort of collection of prints that I framed using some John Lewis frames. But I love the colours, and I kind of love the nod to the garden. They feel kind of floral to me. Over here, this is quite a special piece. This was painted by my grandmother, who was an artist, and this painting came back to us a few years ago. And it's not necessarily something I would have picked first-hand for our kitchen, but I love the fact that we've got a piece painted by somebody in the family, and it just adds a lot of history and interest to the space. I love hanging plates in kitchens. I think plates are such an affordable and cheap way to get artwork. You can pick them up in charity shops, online, on eBay. So you'll see as we move through the house, I've often got plates on walls. These are actually from Morocco, and we've got another few plates over there which are also from Morocco. And this piece is a very special piece. This was painted by my son about three or four years ago, when he was four years old. He actually submitted it to the RA for the Young Artist Show, and it was exhibited there. But it's one of those kind of abstract pieces that young children do. But I love the colours. He got the colours exactly right. He knows what his mother likes, and so it proudly hangs here. We're going to go this way, but we do have a little toilet down here and some coat and shoe storage. One of my main priorities in doing the kitchen was making sure that we had space to hang our coats and for the kids to put their shoes away. So we took a little bit of space from the kitchen so that we could make sure we have all the practical, functional spaces of the home working well. We've got a full-size fridge and freezer here, which is another one of my must-haves. In four or five years' time, I'm going to have three teenagers, so I wanted to make sure that I could have a freezer full of pizzas for emergencies and for when friends come round. And then in here, we have got our pantry, which is where we have all our dry goods, all the snacks, all the kind of really yummy things in the house that are in here, as well as our drinks fridge. So this is everybody's favourite cupboard, and you'll often find somebody hidden in here just kind of nibbling away on something they shouldn't be. Come on into the snug, and this room is kind of our family room where we watch TV and where we play games. One of the risks when you're doing a side return in a Victorian house is that this middle room between the front room and the kitchen just becomes a walkway. So when I'm designing these spaces, I always like to give them a real purpose and define how they're going to be used. So that's what we did here. We put the TV in this room so we knew people would always want to come in here, and we put lots of seating. We've got bookcases and shelving all around here so you can come and read a book. All the kids' games are in here. It's just a really lovely, cosy space to come and hang out. So the front room is a slightly more grown-up place. This is where we come and read a book, or we sit by the fire in the evenings during the winter. It's also where I work as well. I have a little desk here, which means I can kind of work, but still be in the hubbub of family life. This fireplace is the original fire surround. It's Victorian, and it's very common to these kind of houses, but I absolutely love the marble here. And we're very fortunate we've still got all the original cornicing in here, which just has the most beautiful detail, and just adds a level of interest and elegance to this place. This piano we actually got really recently, but it has been in my family for many, many years. It was a present to my mother from her mother when she was 14 years old. She got it for her from Harrods. And if you have a look inside, it's still got the original Harrods sticker number and the order number. But it has been at my aunt's house for a while, and then my cousins and his kids had it, and now finally we've got it. So like the fireplace, we've got a few other original period features in here. We've got shutters in the bay window at the front, and then we've also got these lovely big double doors, which are often open, but they do give us the option to close off these two rooms. So although the colour scheme kind of follows through from one room to the next, they can be separate spaces. I do like colourful interiors. I'm sure you can tell. I often find when I'm trying to work on a colour scheme, what I do is I get kind of A3 pieces of card, and I will paint the samples onto that card. It's really useful because you can move them around, but it also enables you to kind of work out what works together. And to be honest, I often think it's a kind of a gut reaction. You'll see two colours next to each other, and either they'll slightly jar, or they'll just work really beautifully together. And that's what we found here. We've got a really warm yellow in the hallway, this lovely pink here, and then the red in the kitchen. And when you see them all together, they just kind of work together. It's like they're designed to be next to each other. So we've just done a loop of the downstairs, and we are back in the entrance hall where we started. Let's continue the tour upstairs. So this is my bathroom and my husband's bathroom. And I've designed this space to be kind of very relaxing, a place to come and unwind at the end of the day. We've got a lovely light blue, which is Skylight by Farrow & Ball here. And we've gone for a kind of traditional marble checker floor, which I love. And we've actually got a lot of marble in this bathroom. The tiles in the shower are marble. The countertop on the vanity is also marble. What we did here is we decided to just get an off-cut of marble from the stone yard. Rather than buying a whole slab, which is extremely expensive, we went to our local stone yard and had a look at some of the off-cuts they had. It meant that we got this really, really cheap. Sometimes they even give them to you for free. And we just had to pay to have the piece fabricated and installed here. We've then got this lovely vanity unit, which is made by Louis, who did the joinery in our living room and in our kitchen. And this basically stores all of my makeup. And it's supposed to be split 50-50 between me and my husband, but I've slowly migrated over to his side. And the flooring runs into the shower to create that kind of seamless look, which I really love. As well as being our bathroom, it is also the family laundry room because we live in London and space is tight. We need to have lots of multifunctioning spaces. So in here, we've got our washer-dryer. And then we've also got a linen cupboard and another cupboard where we store all our hoovers and mops and stuff like that. But my favourite bit in here of the laundry section are these pull-out drying racks. And they're just so handy. It means we can hang all the washing up here, let it dry, and then when it's done, we can just push them away. That bathroom is on a half landing and now we're going to go up to the first floor where the master bedroom is. So in this room, we've kept the colour scheme quite neutral and calm because it's the bedroom. However, one of the things I really like to do to introduce colour is to have a colour on the woodwork. So rather than a feature wall, I don't love feature walls, I like to do feature woodwork. So we've got this beautiful soft green, which is Verditaire by Farrow & Ball, and that runs along all the woodwork in here and around the fireplace. And it's just such a calming and soft and lovely colour. So the bed is one of my favourite things and I always think your bed should be your favourite place in your home. It's by The Original Bed Company, who are brilliant at making bespoke beds, but for really reasonable prices. We made this bed slightly taller because of the really tall, high Victorian ceilings we have in this bedroom. And then we've upholstered it in this beautiful fabric from Romo that we got custom made for the bed. Another feature in this room is the fireplace over here. And like I said, I love painting all the woodwork in this lovely green Verditaire and that includes the fireplace. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, but I still love it as a feature in the room. And then either side of the fireplace, we've got these built-in wardrobes, partly to maximise space and storage in a Victorian home, but also I love the symmetry of them either side of the fireplace. It just works really well. Similarly, by the bed, we've got an antique side table either side. These were picked up in a local antique shop and I love having an old piece of furniture in each room. It's sort of one of my rules when it comes to designing spaces to have something old and with a bit of history. And we've also got this lovely wooden chest of drawers over here, which just adds more storage, but lots of character. And this painting was done by my mother. It's of my grandparents' house in North Wales and I just love having it hanging by my side of the bed. This rather imposing chap is Edward Ledger, who is my great-great-great-grandfather. And I inherited this painting from my great-aunt when she died. And I was thinking about putting it downstairs, but I think it's a little too much, so we've hidden him away upstairs here where not too many people have to see him. Let's go upstairs to the kids' bathroom and the rooms on the top floor. So we're up on another half landing now and this is the kids' bathroom. And the starting point for this room was this rug, which I inherited from my great-aunt. And I just love that kind of reddy, orangey, terracottery tone. So we picked that up in the freestanding bath that we have here and then also in the blinds up here. So we've got a bit more of a traditional feel in this room with the roll-top bath and then we've got a kind of Victorian washstand, radiators, and then another towel radiator over here. All the pieces in this bathroom are freestanding, which means we've been able to kind of mix and match lots of different things. So one last thing in this bathroom is the fireplace over here. We actually uncovered this when we were tearing out the old bathroom. And although this isn't the original surround, we managed to find a really similar one on eBay and I just love it here. Even though it doesn't work, it just adds a sense of grandeur to the room. So we are now at the very top of the house and this is the kids' bedroom and this is where my two oldest sleep. And the colour scheme in here is kind of primary colours but with a sophisticated twist. So we've got reds, yellows, and blues. And like in our master bedroom, I did the woodwork in a bright colour so we've gone for this lovely deep red all along the woodwork. We then got a lovely kind of mustardy yellow which is India yellow from Farrow & Ball and we've done that on the bedside tables and also here on the wardrobes and then it's picked up again in the light shade. And then for the blues, we've got these twin beds over here which are from John Lewis and I love doing twin beds in a kid's room. I just think they look really lovely next to each other. And you can see that my children have added their own artwork here which has not been approved by me but I'm trying to let them do a little bit of what they want in their own bedrooms. And then our fireplace over here, this was all covered up when we moved in and it had an electric heater underneath and we had no idea that actually the original fire surround was still behind there so we uncovered all of that and then we've done a really fun checkerboard tile which picks up on the red in the rest of the room. So next door we've got the spare room and office and again we followed a kind of similar colour scheme with neutral walls and then a bright colour on the woodwork and I just love this green. It's so cheery and bright and fun and when you're up here working it's very lively. This is where I work and where my husband works and it's where I keep all my interior design samples. So I have cupboards full of fabric, paint, woodwork, all that kind of stuff. And when I'm working on a scheme this is where you'll find me. We've got all our floor samples as well up here so it's really about trying to pull together a layered and fun scheme that just works seamlessly. This up here is a bedroom scheme that I'm working on for Room by Room. Room by Room is a new branch of our business which provides off-the-shelf interior design schemes. So it's a bit like hiring an interior designer but much more affordable and accessible. You can go online, browse our library of schemes, find a room that you love and you can download it and then you have links to all the products there. It makes it super easy to design a room. You can basically click and shop as you go. And that's the end of the tour. Thank you so much for coming Luxury Home Show. It's been a total pleasure. And if you enjoyed this tour of my home come check out my Instagram at rebeccaconstable.design We do loads of educational interiors content on there. Thanks so much guys. Bye.