Camden Palace: an NW1 Family House Goes for Glamour

With five bedrooms and a cinema room, this large house on Prince Albert Road in Camden could be the perfect family home. But the elegant décor, and calming palette is geared far more towards grown-ups than sticky little fingers.

The design was undertaken – and, impressively completed within just four weeks – by Homerun Services, which specialises in luxury furnishing and interior design.

For this particular client, who does not live in the house, the job was, as Homerun’s Ruth Davies explains, “to make the house look its best in order to sell it”.

This is just one of the sorts of commissions that Homerun takes on. “We will do anything from a one-bedroom flat to a six-bedroom house, and can do building work as well as total renovations too.”

“The trick is to layer lots of textiles and get the accessories right. And mirrors also really help to brighten things up.”

For this job, though, it was about designing the décor and installing fittings and furniture. And the latter, Davies explains, is all bespoke and gets made to order. “Which makes the fact that we turned the whole thing around in just four weeks incredibly fast.”

So how does a job like this typically work? “We meet the client and discuss the project and what they need,” says Davies. “We have that consultation first and come up with the cost before doing the moodboard – ie, planning the details of the design or redesign. We don’t charge by the hour as most designers do and we agree an overall fee upfront which, once agreed, is fixed.”

For this sort of makeover-to-sell, usually it is just a selection of the rooms in a large house like this one that get the Homerun treatment. “You don’t need to finish it all if you are just selling rather than living there,” says Davies. “The aim is just to show off the main areas at their best.”

But, of course, the rooms that do get done ‘really’ get done. And the all-white master bedroom is a good starting point. “It was a risk doing it completely white,” explains Davies, “but it has really paid off. It looks great in the photograph – which is key of course to the whole point – to sell it. It looks really striking.”

If you are thinking of a similar look – be warned that an all-white interior can look sterile. “The trick is to layer lots of textiles and get the accessories right,” continues Davies, “And mirrors also really help to brighten things up.” A great book, full of inspiration on this very topic, is ‘Pale and Interesting’ (Ryland, Peters & Small) by Atlanta Bartlett and her partner, Dave Coote. Bartlett’s soft take on this potentially stark shade is really beautiful, particularly if you like your glamour a little rougher around the edges.

The moodily-hued stripey cloakroom is another – very different – statement. “We replaced the existing tiles with this wallpaper,” says Davies, “which is a bold statement – but it gives it a really glamorous look and in a small room like the downstairs loo it’s not too much of a risk.” For some very different takes on wow-factor wallpaper, try Timorous Beasties (whose ‘Toile’ designs, depicting urban decay amid in a traditional, decorative design, you may know) and also Neisha Crosland, whose ‘Watermark’ or ‘Zebra’ patterns are pretty bold, but less out-there. Or, for something altogether different, and rather saucy, Dupenny’s monochrome ‘Burlesque’ and ‘1950s Housewives’ patterns could be fun in the smallest room.

Another bold decision was to go for dark tones in the lower ground floor reception room – wasn’t there a risk that it would rob the space of the little light it already gets? “It’s also the TV room,” says Davies, “so we wanted to give it a cinema room feel.”

And from sticky fingers to adults and teens in between, that’s something that should appeal to everyone in the family.

Homerun Services – www.homerunservices.co.uk