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When Flora Slater was viewing what would become her home in north London, she instinctively knew how she could transform the primary bedroom. “It was a really bizarre blue color scheme, but it had high ceilings and on the empty wall above the bed I remember thinking, ‘If I was to get this house I’d love to install a canopy.’” A few months later the interior designer and her fiance got the keys—and, spoiler alert—Slater got to live out her princess-bed dreams.
Growing up in the English countryside, Slater was influenced by her mom’s way of clashing patterns by the likes of Robert Kime and Colefax & Fowler. “My love of fabrics is one of the main reasons I got into interior design,” she says. With her own place, she wanted to recreate that sense of warmth and coziness, despite the house being close to central London. Luckily, the cottage-like proportions of the compact, 150-year-old Victorian terrace lent itself to this vision.
With the completely open plan downstairs, Slater decided to zone-off different areas through color and furniture placement. She was guided by her collection of paintings by the contemporary Irish artist Maria Murphy, which were too big to hang in her previous apartment. In the front living room, the pastel palette of a piece called “The Monday Sprint” inspired a pale pink feature wall and an armchair covered in playful Wiggle fabric. The space is optimized for TV-watching with a bench by the window alongside a small sofa and an armchair. The club fenders around the fire offer another place for guests to perch: “We love to host and like to cram everyone in,” laughs Slater.
Adjacent to the TV-watching area is a more formal setting where two more of Murphy’s bold paintings are complemented by oversize burgundy lamp bases and ruby red wall lights. “I wanted a balance of new and old,” says Slater of mixing a mid-century sideboard with a sofa recovered in a busy fabric by Colefax & Fowler. The living areas look onto the dining nook, where Slater finally got to use a fabric she had been “obsessed” with for some time (Sanderson’s cheery Anaar). “I think when you’re doing up your own house, you can make your own rules,” she says of the array of colors. The kitchen units were left as they were, but adding floppy fabric pendants and seating pads around the banquette helped to soften the overall feel of the space.
Upstairs, Slater, a self-confessed bath person, knew she couldn’t live with the emerald green of the original bathroom. “It was dark and moody, but I want to feel like I’m in a beautiful light room when I’m having a soak,” she explains. Painting the walls an uplifting shade of yellow has transformed it, while adding white borders—also with paint—proved a cost-effective alternative to paneling. “Everything just ended up getting so expensive, so this was kinder to the budget,” she says.
The bed was a detail she wasn’t willing to compromise on though. Slater had dreamed of having a traditional, half-tester bed since she was a little girl, so when her mom offered her a leftover roll of Robert Kime fabric, she jumped at the chance. She designed the striped headboard and picked a green canopy lining to coordinate with the poppy pattern. “You feel like you’re in a little cocoon, it’s super cozy. And you really don’t feel like you’re in London,” she says. Despite a few protests from her fiance, “he actually secretly loves it,” she adds with a laugh. The house reminds Slater of her childhood home and her mom agrees. “When she walked in, she said, ‘It feels like we’re back in the countryside,’ and that’s definitely the vibe I was going for.”
