Late night scrolling is rarely productive, but in the case of design studio Golden and their clients, it prompted a lucky discovery. ‘The client had been sitting up in the middle of the night with their baby and, keen to start renovating their new house, were scrolling through The List in search of someone whose work they connected with. They got to the letter G, saw our profile and thought, “That’s them!” It was a total gut reaction and we were appointed within the week,’ explains Alice, one half of the duo behind Golden.
The house in question was a four-storey Victorian terrace in Hackney, which the couple had purchased to accommodate their growing family. Because they were moving from a much smaller flat, they had almost no furniture, which meant Golden had a blank slate to work from. ‘They came to the table with lots of different ideas, so we had to dig into what their ideal house would look and feel like.’ As they do for all their projects, Golden worked on a handful of sentences that detailed the exact style they were aiming for. ‘We do this so we have something to refer back to and to ensure we never stray too far from those original wishes,’ explains Alice.
In the more formal sitting room, the ceiling is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Pink Ground’. The designers chose the colour to as a counterpoint to the calming, neutral walls. Here, a Pinch sofa is upholstered in a golden linen from Nix, with cushions in a cut velvet from Dedar. The artwork is a print from Soho Home. The vintage onyx pedestal table was sourced from Whoppah.
Kensington Leverne
Part of what had attracted the clients to Golden was their use of colour, so it’s unsurprising that the heart of the brief was to banish the grey that the previous owners had allowed to run amok in the house. As Alice comments, ‘the entire interior was rendered in shades of grey. We had the full spectrum from a pale foggy hue to dark charcoal!’ Once the brief was nailed down and the paragraph perfected, the Golden duo got to work. ‘Although the house was decoratively tired, it had no structural issues and the layout was functional,’ Alice explains. ‘There were certain things we could see would be fantastic left as is, and even though things were covered in layers and layers of paint, we weren’t going to tear everything out and start again for the sake of it.’ Throughout the house, the omnipresent grey was sanded and painted over, pine floors stripped to bring back their lustre, and the original cornicing and skirting boards given some much needed TLC.
Due to the home’s urban surroundings and the couple’s new baby, the interiors needed to provide a counterpoint to chaos and act as a sanctuary of sorts. In the formal sitting room, a decidedly sophisticated colour palette of soft pink and pistachio green was selected to ensure a calm atmosphere. ‘We wanted this space to be the most impressive, glamorous and grown-up space in the house,’ says Alice. Joinery was elevated with rattan wallpaper, and swathes of flamestitch fabric, velvet and bouclé were layered in, resulting in a laidback, yet elevated room. Upstairs, the clients wanted the primary bedroom and bathroom to be showstoppers. A rich pink was selected for the bedroom, chosen for its cooconing softness and contrasting with a green mohair headboard trimmed in a silk fringe. The jumping off point for the bathroom was a ‘New York inspired, Art Deco aesthetic’ which evolved over the course of the project into something ‘much more unique.’ In the finished space, Moroccan zellige tiles cover both the walls and floor, bringing a reflective and tactile shine to the space, whilst the marble vanity mirror surround nods to the room’s Art Deco influence.