Belsize Park Interior Design & Period-Home Upgrade
A period house on
three levels in NW3
A characterful two bedroom house in Belsize Park, spread over three floors with a generous garden. High ceilings, bay windows, the kind of period fabric people move to this part of London for. The owner is a first time buyer and had already furnished it well before we were involved.
The plan had one thing wrong with it, and it was not obvious from a viewing. The kitchen sat in the middle of the house, wedged between the living room and the dining room, with the garden on the other side of the building from the room that should have opened onto it.
Nothing was wrong with it,
which is the hard brief
The client came to us with a house that was already beautifully furnished. The major pieces were bought and in place, nothing was broken and nothing looked bad. What was missing was cohesion: the rooms were a set of good decisions that had not been made in relation to each other, so the house read as furnished rather than as theirs.
That is harder to work on than a wreck. With a gutted property the brief writes itself. Here every suggestion had to earn its place against something perfectly acceptable that was already there, and the temptation, for us as much as the client, is to justify the engagement by replacing things. The discipline was to change as little as possible and make each change count.
One decision was not small. Partway through the consultancy the client chose to move the kitchen out to the garden side of the house and put the office where the kitchen had been. That swap set the shape of everything that followed.
Two rooms swapped,
and very little else
Betina started with the client's own taste rather than a house style, and took the existing furniture as the foundation instead of the first thing to replace. From there the work divides into one large move and three small ones.
- The kitchen and the office changed places. Cooking moved out to the garden side, so the busiest room in the house now opens onto the outside rather than sitting landlocked between the living and dining rooms. Neither room made this easy. The old kitchen, now the office, is narrow with a slanted ceiling. The new kitchen space is narrower still and has an angled wall, so every run had to be set out against a geometry that is not square.
- The living and dining room got colour, not furniture. High ceilings and bay windows were already doing the architectural work, so the change came through accent pieces in a bold colour and a deliberate mix of textures and materials. The room reads as layered now rather than simply well bought.
- The staircase balustrade was painted deep navy. The smallest change in the project and the best value in it. Dark on a slim vertical element adds depth and contrast without taking any light out of the stairwell, which is what a darker wall would have done.
- The bathroom was stripped back to studwork and rebuilt. A builder beige bath over shower became a step free, glazed walk in shower in handcrafted olive green zellige, with honed Carrara marble on the remaining walls and floor, a fluted walnut floating vanity with hidden storage under a sculpted marble basin, brushed brass taps, flush plate and shower frame, halo lit mirrors, recessed LED niches, underfloor heating and demisting pads.
When a home is already furnished, the job is editing, not buying. Most of the value in this project came from three things that cost very little relative to what was already in the house: moving two rooms, adding colour in the accent layer, and painting one balustrade. The bathroom is the exception, and it is the exception because the room genuinely had nothing worth keeping.
Where things came from
We name suppliers on every project, so you can price the scheme yourself, or buy it yourself if you would rather.
How this project ran
It started small. A ten hour consultancy block aimed only at getting more out of the rooms that already existed: layouts adjusted, colour accents reworked, and a click through shopping list so the owner could upgrade furnishings themselves with no disruption and no obligation to go further.
The client chose to go further. Two Premium Makeover packages followed, one for the relocated kitchen and one for the new office, each with a site measure visit, precise floor plans and annotated 2D elevations setting out every finish and fitting in advance. The bathroom overhaul was specified through the same framework, so all three rooms share one design language and one documentation standard. Sourcing and procurement ran through us: suppliers coordinated, orders placed, deliveries arranged and every item checked against the approved specification, with the trade pricing we hold passed on rather than kept.
That order is worth noticing. Starting with consultancy and adding packages once the value is proven costs less than committing to everything up front, and it lets you stop at any point without having paid for work you did not use.
If you have a home that is furnished but not finished, or a plan where the wrong room faces the garden, the place to start is a call. Fifteen minutes, free, and if the honest answer is that you need a builder before you need us, we will say so.
More completed homes on the projects page, and how design work is scoped on the design overview.
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