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Two unlikely bedfellows – restoration and modernity – meet happily in this west London flat occupying the raised ground floor and basement of a large, Grade II listed Victorian house. Three years ago, the flat’s owner and her decorator began the process of restoring the architectural shell that would provide them with the backdrop they needed to create the owner’s vision of her perfect London base. They commissioned lengths of new cornice copied from surviving fragments, reintroduced correctly proportioned, deep skirting boards and, as a focal point in the sitting room, built a chimney breast with a handsome limestone chimneypiece. With the groundwork in place they began the work of the design and decoration. The result is a thoroughly of-the-moment living space that treats with respect its handsome architectural context. The flat’s owner is American-born Kim Wiehl. Formerly in banking, now heading a trade association of international insurers, Kim has been London-based for 20 years. Her decorator was Helen Green. Neither knew one another before embarking on this project. Kim discovered Helen’s work in a glossy London magazine that landed, uninvited, on her previous doormat. She made a telephone call and the women arranged to meet. At their second meeting they swapped cuttings garnered from a selection of interiors glossies: serendipitously a handful of the images they had cut out were identical, and so their partnership began. Kim admired the tremendous chic of Helen’s work, its easy elegance and evident comfort. The flat that had attracted her in the magazine was, like many of Helen’s projects, predominantly neutral – in this case, the pale backdrop warmed by notes of pink and lavender. For her own flat, Kim was after something steelier – accent notes inspired by colours of a favourite painting of Prague in winter: charcoal, inky turquoise. dull gunmetal. Helen produced a swatch of subtly sheened petrol-blue raw silk –‘cool but calm and luxurious’ – and created the sitting-room scheme around it. The flat was previously home to a bachelor businessman. As Kim remembers, many of the bones were in place. Helen removed a partition between the sitting room and dining area, installing in its place a pair of sturdy-looking columns, and carved out a vestibule area along one side of the same space; but otherwise limited building work was required. The previous owner’s study became Kim’s sitting room, his sitting room became her bedroom, and his bedroom in the basement became her spare bedroom. Helen decorated the whole flat in similar shades of off-white, creating an open, restful and harmonious home within which rooms are subtly demarcated by shifts in colour and tone: blue notes in the sitting room and adjoining dining area; shades of eau de nil in Kim’s bedroom, in which celadon-coloured vases stand on the chimneypiece and the bedhead is covered in a textured self-stripe silk the colour of the crinkly wrappers of Bendicks Ice Mints; rich burgundy cushion and lampshades in Kim’s study downstairs. Nothing jars and nothing shrieks for attention, but the flat is never banal or repetitive. In the sitting room, wooden tables and chairs stand out against the creamy walls, but few of the pieces match: a pair of console tables flanking the chimney breast are the colour of caramel; updated fauteuils designed by Helen have stained, wenge arms; the low coffee table, with its Chinese-influenced legs, is almost black. Beside the sofa, a bespoke hi-fi cabinet is sleekly ornamented with nickel. Like so much here, it suggests the thirties, as Kim intended. The designs are all Helen’s and nod towards the past without ever imitating it. Helen designed the sofas too, which, like the rest of the furniture, were made in her workshops. They are larger than standard, shop-bought sofas and create a genourous sense of comfort. |
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 One of Kim’s requirements of her flat was elegant entertaining space – hence the dining area, with its glamorous chandelier, in what might otherwise have been simply a large vestibule or extension of the sitting room. Kim was not interested in kitchen living, so Helen left the long, thin galley kitchen as it was, refinishing the cupboards with new handles, and choosing a small table where Kim can eat breakfast if she wishes. Kim’s sleek bathroom, lined with limestone and mirror glass, is similarly shoehorned into the available space, leaving intact the ample proportions of Kim’s bedroom next door, in which floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the pretty garden dominated by a single magnolia tree.  From start to finish, Helen spent nine months working on Kim’s flat. For much of that time she and Kim had met twice weekly, Helen involving Kim in decisions large and small. Helen persuaded Kim to sell most of the furniture from her previous flat and start again from scratch. The result of this was that all the flat’s furniture was either designed or finished exactly to Kim’s specification. At their meetings, Helen would present Kim with drawer pulls for dressing tables, glass knobs for cabinets, upholstery swatches and doorknobs. Many were made in custom sizes and finishes. Other items were simply adapted - like the mirror in Kim’s bedroom, left behind by the last owner, previously gilded, now silver-leafed and artfully distressed.
By the casual observer attention to detail on this scale goes unremarked,
but for Kim each decision added to her pleasure in her flat, an
exercise in bespoke decorating that transcends her initial expectations.
Asked what she particularly likes about the flat, Kim cites its
‘totality’ or unified nature – which means she
is just as happy in the sitting room or study downstairs, as in
her bedroom or bathroom. |
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