A Notting Hill villa slowly brought to life with light and colour

When it came to extending the lower-ground floor dining area and kitchen into the garden, in an effort to avoid ‘that thing of a lower-ground floor with a box tacked onto the back’, Serena diligently matched reclaimed bricks to the original Victorian-era ones which make up the rest of the house. The lime mortar holding them together, hand mixed with precision by Serena, is also a replica of the original. Inside, large sash windows flank a central door – all the shutters and shutter bars are hand-made reproductions of the kind of 18th-century designs which would have originally belonged to the house. The door handles throughout received the same treatment.

Linking each of the rooms are wide wooden floorboards made from salvaged cheeseboards. These took six months to lay due to the need for bone dry concrete beneath them, but they ‘were worth it as they provided a basis for the project’. Not one to rush through anything, Serena designed many of the architectural details herself – from the skirting and corning to the joinery, right down to the artful placement of Delft tiles surrounding the fireplace in the main bedroom.

The chair is a Georgian gilt open armchair bought from Christie's. ‘In our last house it was in the Bathroom, but it got elevated when we moved here!’ says Serena. The doors and back of the bookcases are lined with a Christopher Farr wallpaper called ‘Bulu Fuchsia’. ‘I love putting fabric, wallpaper or contrasting paint into bookcases,’ says Serena.

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The rug is a find from the souk in Marrakech. It sits underneath a bespoke coffee table from Serena Williams Ellis that can be made to order. The artwork includes a piece painted by Serena's daughter, Phoebe. The Three Widows was a Portobello Market purchase. ‘I think it cost me £25 - I love putting art into old frames. It gives that eclectic look but still has visual balance,’ explains Serena.

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All of this in the name of good bones. ‘If you don’t get the bones right in a house, everything is wrong,’ remarks Serena. Now she had a light and airy C-shaped house with large rooms wrapping the whole way around a central winding staircase, each a solid foundation for the decoration to come. A self-professed colour obsessée (‘grey and beige is my idea of horror’, she says), Serena found ways to introduce it with careful restraint. ‘I am brave about colour. But you have to be brave in the right places - the walls are mostly off-white and the floor is a biscuit colour, so 80 per cent of each room is neutral, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be punctuated by something really eclectic and fun’.

In the kitchen the colour started with the tiles, which Serena designed herself and had made in a factory in Italy. Their vibrance led seamlessly to the sunny yellow on the kitchen island, which in turn is balanced by the blue of the curtains and cabinets in the pantry – a careful alchemy and one which Serena has executed with aplomb. Upstairs in the sitting room, stippled pink walls are the result of a paint effect hand-applied by Cornelia Faulkner and Kate Straker, which achieves the desired organic, plaster-like aesthetic.

Kitchen tiles, designed by Serena and made in Italy, set the tone in the kitchen. The island is painted in Paper and Paints ‘SC207’.

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‘It is quite good to be really bold in places that you don’t spend a lot of time in,’ says Serena of the guest bathroom and the hallway. With this in mind the the hallways and staircases are painted in two tones of blue, leading to the top-floor bathroom which is clad with yet more bright, patterned tiles designed by Serena.

‘The bones of the house become the backdrop for your “feck”,’ says Serena. Not to be confused with an expletive, ‘feck‘ here refers to the old Irish idiom meaning ‘stuff’, and ‘stuff’ – particularly beautiful ‘stuff’, is this former antique dealer’s speciality. ‘Because the house took so long I was able to buy and stockpile pieces. In terms of furniture, I am drawn to charm, and things that have a bit of magic to them. I like furniture that feels “pretty” instead of just a lump of solid brown that doesn’t have patination or colour,’ she says.

The curtain fabric is ‘Old Flax Patmos Blue’ by Soane Britain. The chairs are Georgian circa 1780 with drop in seats covered in red goat hides hand dyed with natural dyes.

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The lamp above the dining table is a rise and fall lamp from Soane Britain paired with a bespoke wicker shade.

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The ‘circus’ artwork is a 20th-century English piece. Walls painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Slipper Satin’ act as a neutral backdrop for Serena's collection of artwork.

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Each of the rooms is filled with Serena’s curated assembly of ‘old, new, battered and blue’ pieces. ‘I am mad about a mix of painted furniture and fruit wood furniture: English, and continental,’ she says, the running thread being a ‘quietly loved look which feels gentle on the eye’. This smorgasbord of pretty, gentle things includes an impressive 18th-century four poster bed in the main bedroom, a Georgian gilt armchair in the sitting room and 19th-century Venetian mirrors in the main bathroom, all accompanied by an ever-growing collection of modern and 20th-century art.

A view from the back to the front of the lower-ground floor. The curtains are lined in Ian Mankin's ‘Red Ticking’ with edges bound in ‘Lange Glazed Linen’ by Schumacher.

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‘It’s about juggling things around until you reach a spot where everything is in a happy, easy place, but there’s a balance there too between the colours, eras and shapes,’ says Serena. ‘Just like the house, I like objects to feel like they have a story and that they have always been there’. Much to Serena’s delight, the final result achieves just that. ’It really is the most fabulous house,’ she says.

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