Studio Vero transform a Notting Hill townhouse with vibrant colour

‘We felt really excited after our first talk with these clients’ says Venetia Rudebeck one of two founders of Studio Vero. ‘We had a getting-to-know-you meeting’ says Romanos Brihi, her business partner, ‘finding out how they wanted to live and looking through their inspo images. We knew then they were going to be great to work with. We saw they love 1960s Italian design and they were not scared of colour, which is why they came to us’. Its previous owner had left the Victorian stucco house in Notting Hill in good condition, though with bland, ‘very vanilla’ decoration. Their clients had no furniture of their own, so Studio Vero sourced everything for the project, re-using the existing white linen curtains, fabric walling and a sofa.

Open the front door and the transformation is striking. All the woodwork, from the hall up, is painted in aubergine gloss. The walls are pink, and an abstract Gideon Hatch rug and a green and white Pale Fire lamp make quite an impact. ‘They had showed us a pink room in their inspiration images’ says Romanos, 'and we suggested putting the colour right up the stairs, the aubergine woodwork makes the pink less girly’. ‘All our friends love the aubergine’ says their client.

It is a vibrant introduction to a house, which, for the moment, is very much a place for entertaining. ‘They wanted a glamorous house for partying, with potential for family life later on. We made sure there was, for example, a coat cupboard big enough to take a buggy and, thinking ahead to toddlers’ needs, we installed a small bath in the former shower room’ says Venetia.

The aubergine woodwork continues in the blue-painted sitting and dining rooms where its dark colour frames views to the garden, and provides a contrast to the existing white curtains, which have been hung on new poles and edged with a patterned braid. ‘We wanted to give them lots of seating for entertaining’ says Romanos ‘The curved sofa is a good solution, it stretches into the alcove, and you can see everyone in the room’. Two different rugs – geometric and Bauhaus-inspired for the sitting room, more rustic for the dining room – define both spaces. A dining table seating eight, commissioned for the room, is placed off-centre, surrounded by Howe chairs, and a banquette in dark green leather. ‘Placed here it feels a bit less formal when just the two of them are eating’ he says.

The paint colour for the ‘perfectly good’ existing kitchen cabinets, ‘a happy mustard’ he calls it, was controversial. The clients were doubtful, they asked their parents, and the nervous consensus was ‘It’s bold… very bold’. But the owners bravely agreed with Studio Vero’s colour advice, and now they love it. Some equally bold Balineum tiles took attention away from the existing work surfaces.

Far from boring is the transformation of the tiny workstation on the upstairs landing, now made memorable with a Ferrick Mason wallpaper. Studio Vero called in a seamstress to invisibly mend some small flaws in the blue fabric walling in the main bedroom. The long burgundy headboard behind the bed, with lighter olive behind the mid-century bedside tables, provides a sober backdrop for a red-striped bedspread made from a C&C Milano fabric. ‘Off the peg bedspreads are just too small’ says Venetia ‘we nearly always make our own’. Other touches of red in this restful room include a strong Raoul fabric on the bench, a traditional floral design for the bed cushion and a burgundy lacquer chest of drawers. The blue of the bedroom is reprised in the panelled bathroom next door, with the dark olive used here too, on the vanity unit.