The Househunter: A Four Bedroom House in a Regeneration Area

So turns out you don’t like the maximalism of the Wow!house then. I had thought it might provide colour inspiration rather than a wholesale adoption of a look, but perhaps you had to be there. Therefore, in contrast, today we’re going minimal with this four bedroom modern house in an award-winning regeneration area of west London.

It’s on with The Modern House for £1,050,000 and was designed by Angel O’Donnell, whose work has featured on these pages before. Shall we sit here on the roof terrace for a moment? Yes it’s lush and green but those pink chairs are a perfect splash of colour out there. Perfect for those who might crave the colour of flowers but lack the time and skill to maintain them. Now come inside…

And just look at those doors. A splash of sunshine yellow that links in and out and brings you to the matching table. And I have noticed on instagram recently, for this is where these things start nowadays, a slight shift away from the classic black crittall dominance of recent years. Now it’s a classic so don’t panic if you have it (and I do for one) as it will always frame a view and look beautiful, but this is, perhaps, the next stage for some – the rise of the coloured crittall-style door. There has been a green set floating around on the ‘gram for a while, yesterday I saw a blue version and today this. Earlier this week I posted the wooden, small paned extension of Good Bones London, which is cream and Around Robyn has opted for cream aluminium doors. In short it’s not a rule, but an idea and one that you can adopt or not as you fancy. I’m just here to show it to you. And I think in the depths of a London winter it’s perfect. Blue might feel a little too seaside for an urban roof garden whereas this soft yellow is just a splash of sunshine on a rainy day.

The glazing, by the way, has been fitted with an anti-glare UV film to protect furniture and art from damage. This is definitely worth thinking about if you have anything living opposite a sunny window. In our last house there was a wall of bookshelves on a landing with a skylight above. How lovely we thought, this would normally be a dark spot but instead the light floods all the way down the stairs to the floor below. Then we moved house and realised, when we came to take the paperbacks off the shelves that all the spines had faded so much we had no idea what the titles were. Great for that minimal styling beloved of magazines, less good if you are actually looking for something to read.

Anyway, moving on let’s look at the rest, although stopping for a moment to say why have a wooden table when you can have a powder-coated steel one that would be fine with hot dishes, wipe clean and add another material to the mix?

I have written many times about zoning open plan spaces with rugs – that act as flat walls if you like – but here the job has been done with open shelving which is a perfect way to create more spaces that won’t block the light. These ones are very minimally styled but imagine a few plants – linking back to that garden, as well as a few large books in piles – spines facing into the room – and the odd objet. The shelves have been arranged to create a little sitting area facing the garden and it’s the perfect place to sit and signal that you might want some quiet, non-conversational time within a large room that might have other members of the family present.

When we interviewed Julia Samuel, the psychotherapist, for the podcast during lockdown, she made the point that even in small spaces it’s important that people have a way of signalling – without having to make a big deal about it – that they want some quiet. That could be this chair. She even said that in a small flat, teaching a child that if they lay a towel on the floor and sit on it that it is a signal that can be understood by the rest of the family.

In this case, these shelves are a way of creating two seating areas out of one. One for tv and chat and one for gathering ones thoughts and reading a book. Note here also, the furniture is all on legs so you see more floor – imagine how much more cluttered it would look if it all sat heavily flush to the floor. The open shelves are echoed in the overhead lamp and the style of the coffee table. The light can pass freely around this room and there are no dark corners.

Quick look at the kitchen – now this is a tidy minimal dream. I would want to add a rug and probably a few herbs and flowers on that island but then I’m not a minimalist. Neither am I a maximalist – I suspect like most of you, most of us are somewhere in the middle. But you could absolutely take this sleek and pared back idea of a kitchen and drench it in the colour of your choice. That’s probably the halfway point – the cups and herbs and all the stuff that is needed is hidden away out of sight but the colour of the cupboards is like a shot of joy every time you walk in. And if you know what your personal colour joy is then you do owe it to your mental health to bring a splash of it into every room.

The kitchen leads out to another tropical style garden. This feels like you’ve washed up in Bali and I imagine it will be a fabulous space once it has some greenery winding its way all over. It may also end up as a sort of outdoor dining room in a dry summer as the pergola will provide shade and a layer of vines would keep a light summer rain off anything sitting below it.

We’ll just pop into one bedroom as, again it’s very minimal in style and while not huge there is lots of storage and what I wanted to point out was the yellow floor that ties in to the yellow of the dining table and windows. This bathroom has a folding door, which is a great solution if you would like a space-saving sliding door but don’t have room. I have done this on the first floor shower room where a full size door was in danger of knocking someone down the stairs if opened in a hurry. A folding door obviously takes up less room wherever it opens. Mine goes outwards and sits flush against the small area of wall on the landing (about half a door size) this goes inside and sits against the wall in the room.

Below is a sliding door that moves along a rail (cheaper than a pocket door and easier to retro fit) and I like the porthole window. The yellow makes another appearance here on the vanity unit.

Finally, for those of you with grey bathrooms who may have been feeling a little cold faced with recent explosion of colour and pattern we have been seeing look how grey warms up immediately when faced with a little pink (or yellow). Grey is the most easily influenced colour on the spectrum and you can change the whole feel of a room by changing the colour of the accessories – so here we have a soft pink, and highly reflective vanity unit, some wood (ceiling and stool) and an even paler pink set of towels. Simply pick your accent colour and go.

Any takers for this one? There are lots of ideas for smaller spaces and using colour so I hope it gives you inspiration for your own places and spaces.