A Marylebone pied-à-terre with a colourfully chic interior by Waldo Works
‘Working on this scale,’ says Tom Bartlett about this compact pied-à-terre in Marylebone, ‘is a bit like working on a boat. You get to do lots of little things that make a big difference.’ The two-bedroom flat on a street of classic red-brick buildings and stylish shops was an unusual job for Tom, founder, along with Sasha von Meister of design studio Waldo Works. His work tends to be on a much larger scale, but since the flat belongs to a good friend, whose former London house he had designed and built and whose taste he knew, it was an appealing project to take on.
Designers often say that small spaces are good opportunities for indulgent decoration, which was certainly the case here. ‘My client spent a lot of time in Paris growing up, and her brief was inspired by the idea of a chic little 1970s, 1980s boîte of an apartment there. She also travels a lot for her job, so she wanted it to feel like a very well-appointed hotel room, but one that was not in any way bland. It had to have a clear identity and be a personable space.’
The hallway sets the tone – an unquestionable personable space despite its miniature scale, with bright blue walls and deeper blue doors with fat, glossy handles. ‘I had in mind the idea of going into a nightclub where you’re not quite sure if you’re invited, or which door to go through,’ says Tom. ‘I like that it’s slightly confusing, and you might not immediately be sure if something is a door or a wall.’ With 1970s Paris in mind, he was contemplating a full-on leopard print carpet, but settled, in the end, for a muted Pierre Frey take on the style.
One side of the flat is taken up by the kitchen, a dining room and a sitting room, the latter two divided by a chimney breast. Tom installed an elegant felt-covered folding door on one side of the fireplace, so that the sitting room and dining room can be open to one another or closed off, and knocked through the narrow bit of wall on the other side, creating a desk which spans both rooms, but which can also be closed off with a matching folding screen. ‘I find that issue of open plan spaces vs privacy quite interesting,’ says Tom. ‘With open plan I always think, “Really, do you want to hear your partner coughing wherever you are, wouldn’t you like to be able to close a door?” So it was quite fun to be able to work those issues out.’
Tom refers to the kitchen as a rather Alice in Wonderland space, with its bright chequerboard floor, sunny yellow Marianna Kennedy blind and aubergine cabinets. As the owners are only in the flat two or three nights a week, and have an array of excellent restaurants outside the door, the kitchen only needed to be efficient, rather than all-singing and dancing, though Tom still found room for a banquette and table against one wall. ‘I love tiny kitchens,’ he says, ‘where you don't actually have to move and you've got everything, literally everything there. It’s rather fun to minimise what you need in a small flat – the kitchen doesn’t have an oven, which I always think is rather glamorous.’
While glamour is one element of the apartment’s success, another is a sense of enveloping comfort. ‘That’s something my client definitely wanted,’ explains Tom, ‘that sense of being up among the rooftops in this very cosy space.’ The whole flat, apart from the kitchen and bathroom, is carpeted, which lends a cocooning feel, and the rich colours of each room only add to that. The sitting room and dining room are papered in a utilitarian brown paper from Hamilton Weston (??), a backdrop enlivened by warm reds on the doors and upholstery. This colour scheme was designed to reflect the outside environment of red and brown brick buildings, while the bedrooms are in warm yellow and a pink that makes the most of the ‘honeyed light’ that reflects off the brick. The bathroom, meanwhile, is resplendent in electric yellow and green tiles, a scheme based on a 1930s bathroom Tom had seen in Havana.
Tom remembers his client saying that she thought the flat might become ‘a gem’ to hand on to her daughter when she grows up, and Although the terms ‘jewel box’ and ‘bijou’ are much overused when it comes to small, exquisitely decorated apartments, there is something about this flat that makes them especially hard to resist.
Rebecca Reid1/9The chair is Non-Standard's ‘Geometer’ design, and the blind is a Marianna Kennedy book cloth blind in ‘Lemon’.
Rebecca Reid2/9The hallway features Arte's ‘Le Corbusier Dots’ wallpaper, while doors are made particularly striking thanks to D-Line's ‘Fat’ door handle, designed by Tom Dixon. Another Marianna Kennedy book cloth blind in ‘Saxe Blue’ continues the theme.
Rebecca Reid3/9In the main bedroom, a cushion in Christopher Farr Cloth's ‘Cactus Flower’ design pulls together various strands of the colour scheme, including the headboard in Rose Uniacke's Cotton Velvet in ‘Lotus’. The wardrobes have fronts in a sisal by Nobilis, along with tassel handles from Jessica Light.
Rebecca Reid4/9The lamp is from Marianna Kennedy; the curtains are made up in Malabar's ‘Ticka’ stripe.
Rebecca Reid5/9In the children's bedroom, a Louis Poulsen ‘PH5’ pendant hangs over the bed. The headboard is upholstered in Christopher Farr Cloth's ‘Belge’ in green, and the valance is in Etro's ‘Balta’.
Rebecca Reid6/9Looking back down the hallway from the spare room – the open door leads into the bathroom.
Rebecca Reid7/9The bathroom was designed by Tom to look like a 1930s bathroom he had seen in Havana.
Rebecca Reid8/9The lamp over the mirror is Astro's ‘Ortona’ twin wall lamp – the mirror itself was an Art Deco find from Etsy.
Rebecca Reid9/9Tom Bartlett.
