Inside a Thameside London Apartment Inspired by the English Countryside

I used to live in the country in quite a big village house with lots of land. It was a hassle and hard work and decided that living in London was the answer. Doing interior design and having an office in London is so much easier. I borrowed a flat next door. It belongs to friends of ours who live abroad and it was just lovely. We decided that this was absolutely the place that we wanted to live. I looked at lots and lots of flats in the street. None of them were quite right and then landed on this one which was just a joy. The aspect here is fantastic because there are no trees immediately in front of this block which means we have an uninterrupted view of the river. Living in a flat is so liberating and we absolutely love the fact that we can shut the door and leave. There's so little maintenance, so little to do. I've just got to remember to water the plants. The second we bought it I did the layout straight away. Everything had a place. The day the builders finished we moved in. It is full of things that came with me from my old home. Even though our children are grown up and don't live here, I wanted them to be able to come here and feel like this was their home. I really wanted to bring the country with us to London because we both lived in the country for a long time so I didn't want it to feel too slick and too chic. This sofa covered in Colfax chintz was in my old house. It was in perfectly good condition and did not need reupholstering so I decided to design this whole room around it. That was my starting point. On this wall they're just loads of pictures and I like the feeling that they've really just been thrown onto the wall so there's no sort of order to it at all. This painting I love by Bridget Lansley. I used to be a sculptor. At one exhibition I spent all my earnings on this painting. The shelf was key because we had so many books. I just needed to find a way to get more books into this room and there wasn't any more wall space. I popped them up there and I absolutely love it. This was new, this antique cupboard which houses the television. I had the tiles commissioned by a potter called Nicola Werner. I absolutely love them, they're just so sweet. I went through a phase of collecting these plates. In fact in my old home I had them everywhere. I haven't got room for all of them here. It was really important to have enough room for the children and their friends, hence the reason why we've got the two tables and it works so well. We just absolutely love sitting in the window, it's just fantastic. The view changes every day. There's always people rowing and people walking along the riverbank and there's always something to look at. Even if the weather is filthy, it's still lovely to look out of the window. It's brilliant. This is the kitchen. We kept the oven, that's the only thing in the entire flat that we kept. I sort of struggled over the colours in this room for a while and I always wanted to have off-white walls so I was going to always do a different colour for the woodwork, for the skirting boards and for the units in the kitchen. One day I just thought, gosh it would be really nice to have a sort of quite nearly Wedgwood blue. It probably does have a sort of country element to it. I think everything in this flat has a country feel to it really. Even though it's small and compact, everyone can be in this room and I'm with them. I love cooking here. I always like a drinks cupboard as close to where people come in as possible. So in the hall I decided that I really wanted to be very dramatic and Laura, who painted it, added many many layers. There's lots of movement in it. I also really wanted to keep all the original mouldings, all the wonkiness about them and all the bumps and lumps. I just thought if it was varnished that would accentuate that. I reconfigured the two bathrooms, made this bathroom a bit bigger and added a jib door here. The doll's house was made by my mother's godfather who was an architect called Norman Evel. It lights up and and he made all the furniture inside it as well. It's just rather special. I pretty much designed the layout in the hall around putting that here. We're in the sitting room and we tend to use this more in the winter, particularly in the afternoons and evenings because it's so cosy. I didn't want to have a third bedroom because we couldn't have enough bedrooms for everybody anyway so it just means that we've got two separate living areas which is really nice. This sofa can be made up as a single bed so if we have overflow, people staying, we do have another bed. I wanted it to be framed by bookcases because I'm not a great fan of the bookcases either side of the fireplace. I just think it's so obvious and I wanted to paint it this colour because particularly in the afternoons it sort of lights up. It's an Edward Boomer colour called Malahide. I just love as much colour as possible really. A world without colour would be bad in my opinion. The television is in an old linen press and I've sort of slightly butchered it inside and taken out shelves and it's a bit of a mess actually but it is absolutely brilliant because the drawer just slides out with the television on it and obviously you wouldn't know it's in there. So this is our room, our bedroom and we have the most wonderful feeling of space because the building opposite is a floor lower so we've just got sky. The colour palette for this room came from a jumper I own which is stripy. There's sort of a bit of pink and a bit of blue and turquoise and green and mustard yellow skirtings and architraves. So I prefer to use wider bedside tables and it's quite good if you can find low chest of drawers. It's quite nice to have big lamps if possible either side of a bed and then I normally put little reading lights which can be switched separately to the rest of the circuit in the room. This is about as high as I would make a headboard. I wouldn't probably want it much higher than this but it's got quite a pretty shape and it's covered in a fabric I love from Namesame, tissu de laine. I designed lots of joinery in this flat because obviously space is limited so I wanted a big wardrobe but I didn't want it to look too solid hence the reason I put the fabric in the doors but that meant that I couldn't have a mirror, a long mirror on the inside of the door. I designed it so that the two panels on on this outside edge are mirrored. So this is the guest bedroom. We actually decided not to sleep on this side of the building even though the river is this side and it's so lovely and it's such a lovely outlook. It is very noisy first thing in the morning with the tannoys and the rowers. The plan for this room was that I really wanted to use this Jean Monroe fabric on the headboard. I absolutely love the wallpaper. It's Hamilton Western and I just think it's so pretty and I found this patchwork quilt which is a bit sort of quirky and bonkers but I think it's really cozy in here. I find the process of mixing patterns quite instinctive but it's definitely about scale. If you end up with too many patterns the same scale that's when they start fighting with each other. This room really started around the floor. The green Zelige tiles, I just wanted to use them and I love the shape of them. I found this chest of drawers in a charity shop and I just thought it doesn't matter if it gets wet and I'll convert it into a vanity unit. I had this chair in my old bedroom covered in this fabric so it sort of worked in here perfectly and it's so pretty that chintz. I collected pink lusterware from really early. I mean I was probably about 17 when I started buying it. I still love it even after all these years. The pictures actually were framed by my mother. She used to be a framer. I'm very fond of them. I like to produce houses and homes and flats that are welcoming and have a feeling of being lived in. Every time I walk through the door it makes me feel so happy. I love it here. You know, how could you not love this light and this view? It's just wonderful.