{"id":23653,"date":"2025-10-31T07:28:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T07:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/23653\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T07:28:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T07:28:32","slug":"inside-david-harbour-and-lily-allens-weird-and-wonderful-brooklyn-town-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/23653\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside David Harbour and Lily Allen\u2019s \u201cWeird and Wonderful\u201d Brooklyn Town House"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a mad, mad, mad, mad world at the Brooklyn town house of Lily Allen and David Harbour. Dressed in an intrepid pasticcio of chintz balloon shades, crystal chandeliers, pink silk, tiger-patterned textiles, and Mylar wallpaper, the home issues a full-throated rebuke to the current vogue for hushed good taste wrapped in a straitjacket of beige. With an able assist from AD100 designer Billy Cotton<\/a> and architect Ben Bischoff of MADE<\/a>, Allen and Harbour have conjured a familial fantasyland of daring beauty and individual connoisseurial vision. In short, it\u2019s a knockout.<\/p>\n

\u201cLily is the one who really set the tone and drove the program. Every time I tried to make it calmer, she kept pushing and pushing for more,\u201d Cotton says of his adventurous, British-born client, who stars in the upcoming television series Dreamland as well as a revival of Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman debuting in June on London’s West End. Harbour, too, credits his formidable spouse for the stylistic bravura that propelled the idiosyncratic project. \u201cLily is someone who lives with color in a deeper way than most. Her taste is bold, silly, fun, eccentric\u2014it\u2019s exciting,\u201d says the Stranger Things<\/a> actor and star of the recent blood-splattered Christmas spectacular Violent Night.<\/p>\n

\"inside<\/p>\n

Ginori 1735 Oriente Italiano Potiche Vase<\/p>\n

Palm Brass Floor Lamp by Studio Anansi for CB2<\/p>\n

OKA Apadana Armless Chair<\/p>\n

Chelsea Textiles Pie Crust Table<\/p>\n

The canvas for the couple\u2019s freewheeling exercise in decorative derring-do is a stately late-19th-century Italianate brownstone in Brooklyn\u2019s Carroll Gardens<\/a> neighborhood. \u201cThe fac\u0327ade was badly deteriorated, and the interior was…well, let\u2019s say it was very lived-in,\u201d Bischoff recalls of the house\u2019s precarious condition. \u201cBut after we peeled away decades of renovations and lots of faux-wood paneling, we found a surprising amount of original moldings and doors, which gave us a good starting point to rethink the architecture. David and Lily were not interested in formality, especially with Lily\u2019s kids in the house. They wanted to preserve the details and character, but they also wanted to live in it in a casual, family-friendly way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cotton launched the design journey by laying out three distinct directions for the interiors: traditional English<\/a>, modern Brooklyn town house, and, finally, layered Italian, \u201cas if they\u2019d inherited the home from a kooky Italian nonna with fabulous taste,\u201d Cotton says. It didn\u2019t take long to alight on the preferred scheme. \u201cThis neighborhood has historically been Italian American, so the idea of doing something with an Italian flavor wasn\u2019t that far-fetched,\u201d Allen explains. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in interiors, and I\u2019ve always done my own homes. But this was a big undertaking, and I needed help. Together, Billy and I tried to reach for something weird and wonderful,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"check\"banquette<\/p>\n

In the kitchen\/dining area, Cotton used a laminated plum-colored check fabric by Claremont<\/a> for the banquette and chair upholstery as well the island skirt.<\/p>\n

Daniela Wilde Chandelier by Ralph Lauren Home<\/p>\n

Indian Basket Dinner Plate by Herend Porcelain Manufactory<\/p>\n

Matilda Goad & Co Ribbed Beeswax Candles, Set of 6<\/p>\n

Match 1995 Beaded Round Tureen<\/p>\n

The eccentricities of the house extend to both the extravagant decor and the atypical layout. Consider the primary bath\u2013cum\u2013sitting room on the second level. With its wall-to-wall floral carpet, Zuber wallpaper<\/a>, and sink stands crafted from Louis XVI\u2013style commodes of gilt bronze and parquetry, the room is a far cry from the modern ablutionary splendor of sleek book-matched-marble walls and sculptural freestanding tubs. (If you\u2019re wondering about the carpet, the toilet and shower are in a different room altogether.) From the stair hall, one must traverse the bath to gain access to the windowless primary bedroom, improbably nestled in a cloistered chamber between the bath at the front of the house and the dressing rooms along the rear fac\u0327ade. \u201cBilly would say, \u2018You know this is a little crazy,\u2019 or he\u2019d bring up resale value. But this is our home, and we want to live in it in a way that works for us,\u201d Allen asserts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a mad, mad, mad, mad world at the Brooklyn town house of Lily Allen and David Harbour.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[15421,5610,98,100,99,12977,15423,1472,9,24,63,14880,15422,15424,14881],"class_list":["post-23653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-_celeb-onboarding","tag-_sensitivecontent","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-ecommerce","tag-fullbleedteaser","tag-magazine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-onecolumn","tag-paywall-exclude","tag-storytypedeep-dive","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}