My starting point for this kitchen in our London home
was a leafy green and pink wallpaper to connect the
space to the outside; the bifold doors and the nature
reserve beyond our garden gate mean the room feels
very close to nature. I decided to hang the wallpaper
before making any other decorating decisions so that
we could get a feel for how this one big change affected
the other elements of the
space – something I’d really
recommend. As it turned out,
the green in the wallpaper
helped bring out the green in
the cabinets, and by adding a
brighter shade of green via the
zig-zag tile, I created the indoor
forest effect I’d been after. The wallpaper also appeared
darker than I’d expected – it has a black background
after all – so painting the cabinets dark would have
been too much anyway.
A final word on my decision to replace the white
composite work surface in my London kitchen with
Carrara marble. When I first mentioned this on
Instagram, I was deluged with messages telling meI was insane: marble was porous, stained easily
and would be wrecked in no time, I was told. But
I loved the idea of having a stunning slab of natural
material in the middle of my home and decided to
go for it anyway.
A week after it was installed, I had a huge 40th
birthday party at home and the marble breakfast bar
played host to 40 bottles of
pink champagne. The next
morning, there were bottle
rings all over the surface (they
come up as a different texture,
not a different colour, so you
only see the marks when the
light hits them at a certain
angle). But you know what? I love them! They’re a
permanent (unless I decide to repolish the surface)
reminder of an amazing night with rivers of posh
pink fizz. Plus they’re part of the patina of family life.
Bring on those fun-time stains, I say!
The dining room is open to the family room and
kitchen, and leads directly to the garden via glass
doors, so the obvious choice was a continuation ofThere was only one
thing for it: a vibrant
peachy pink applied
during a family holiday.90