How to revamp a mews house with just colours, fabrics, and a few vintage pieces
The project brief was very simple: to renovate a mews house in Little Venice with a maximum budget of £250k for a single gentleman.
Once we allowed for refurbishing the bathroom, installing new flooring, and renewing the kitchen, what was left of the already tight budget was very little.
How to put it to good use to decorate the house and give it a character?
We started with the colour scheme: colour is always our first port of call when the budget is limited.
The right hue can elevate a space, suggest an atmosphere, and enhance existing furniture and art.
Our client has lived in the Far East for many years and during that time he has collected an eclectic mix of objects and art while acquiring an open-minded view of strong colour combinations.
In the kitchen the splashback is purple, to contrast the primary colours of a beloved print.
The staircase and the corridor are a putty colour which brings together the eclectic mix of art on the walls, which spans from Vietnamese propaganda posters from the 50s and 60s to Chinese calligraphy and an unashamedly kitsch composition of butterfly wings.
The sitting room walls are vanilla white, to offset the warm wood of a pair of vintage Burmese chairs and of a Conran sideboard that has been with the client since the 80s.
During his time in China, our client took calligraphy lessons and acquired some pieces of calligraphy from his teacher and his friends. The largest – at almost 2 meters tall – hangs on the double-height wall that connects the dining area with the sitting room upstairs. The wall is painted in India Yellow by Farrow and Ball and can be seen from almost every angle of the house, lending a sunny vibe to the space even in the depth of winter.
The small guest bedroom is painted tea green, including the wardrobes. A Hmong skirt framed in perspex hangs above the bed, while a vintage paisley shawl has been fashioned into a blind. The bed is dressed in a combination of botanical patterned sheets from Marks and Spencer and Indian Kantha scarves.
In the master bedroom, we complemented the client’s beloved banana-yellow bed with very dark blue walls and chocolate brown wardrobes. The result is a grown-up and deeply relaxing room accented by the colourful tanka - a Buddhist hanging scroll - from Tibet and tone-on-tone blinds hand woven in Laos
The dusty raspberry hue of the study/guest bedroom looks wonderful when the cherry tree outside is in blossom and provides an unusual contrast with the black and white images of the client’s car-racing past.