Bexley Village Townhouse Two

The brief

The same development as the Bexley Village Townhouse, and the same starting point: a new build with a developer’s kitchen and bathrooms already installed and perfectly good, and rooms with no architectural detail to work with. These clients had seen what the finishing layers had done next door, and wanted the same thought given to a completely different feel: timeless classic, with a more contemporary undertone in the kitchen diner, and a home built around the art they already owned.

The design

Nothing structural changed here either. The kitchen and bathrooms stayed, and the character came from everything layered around them.

All the kitchen units were already in situ before we started, but we were in time to make one fundamental amendment to the island worktop. This kitchen is a little smaller than the one next door, and it was the only place in the house where the couple could sit down to eat with family and friends, so with the client we instructed the developer to take away the bar overhang. Losing it gained the room a proper dining table, and to these clients somewhere to eat together was worth far more than a couple of stools.

The colour started with a painting the clients already owned and wanted to hang in the kitchen. We took the red from it and ran it through the room as a glass splashback behind the developer’s units, and because the glass is reflective it throws that colour and the light back across the space. With the kitchen itself unchanged, that one move gave the room an instant personality and made the painting look as though everything had been designed around it. Next door, the same thinking produced orange; here it reads quite differently, which is the point.

Through the rest of the house the feel is timeless classic: textured walls, warm metals, soft layers and collected pieces, with the kitchen diner kept a little more contemporary so the two sit comfortably side by side.

Every detail, considered

The lounge shelving and media unit were designed from scratch for the room. The clients had fallen for a particular style of panelling and were keen to bring it into the scheme, so we took it as the starting point and used it for the base unit doors, which gives the whole piece a reason to be there rather than looking like storage bought in. We designed shelving for the grandchildren’s room too, so that when they come to stay they have somewhere of their own for books and toys.

With no period detail to inherit, the detail had to be made. Coving was the only piece of architecture we added, and it does a surprising amount: it gives every room an edge and a shadow line where there had been none. In the lounge we added a wall covering, whose texture wraps the room and gives it the enveloping, finished feel that paint alone never quite reaches. Fitted shelving with integrated lighting turned flat walls into places to display sculpture, books and prints, so the objects light the room rather than the ceiling doing all the work. Art was hung to lead you from room to room, lamps were layered so evenings feel warm rather than lit, and every piece the clients already owned was given a place worth having.

The result

Two houses on the same street, built to the same drawings, that now feel nothing like each other. This one is calm, collected and classic, a home shaped around the things its owners love, with a kitchen diner that carries the red of the painting that started it all.

Services: The Finishing Layers.