Playfulness and practicality mingle in a London house by Lucy Hammond Giles

A few years ago, the writer Neil Gaiman gave a masterclass during which he discussed the importance of a ‘creative com-post heap’ onto which a writer throws all the scraps of inspiration they encounter. ‘They will rot down,’ he said. ‘And out of them grow beautiful stories.’ It is an idea that can be applied to any creative endeavour and the interior designer Lucy Hammond Giles uses the analogy when talking about her own work.

‘You have all these ideas, these references gathered along the way, and then a space comes along where they fit in, like lost jigsaw pieces,’ Lucy explains. ‘It’s almost like a muse speaking through you,’ she adds with a laugh. I mention this part of our conversation as it captures a few of the appealing qualities of this decorator, who heads up a team at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler: Lucy is engaging, creative and funny, and does not take herself a bit seriously.

Two items in Lucy’s ‘compost heap’ were the library of Pitzhanger Manor, Sir John Soane’s country house in Ealing, and her own snaps of a spiral staircase in the Chinese Palace in Palermo, taken on a holiday in Sicily. From these was born the design for the vaulted ceiling in the dining room of the Victorian house in west London in which we are chatting. Hand-painted with an ivy-wrapped latticework motif by the decorative specialist Magdalena Gordon, of Atma Decorative Arts, it sits above four crescent-shaped slivers of verre églomisé. There are trompe l’oeil painted pocket doors between this space and the kitchen; when they are closed, it becomes an intimate and gently glamorous room.

It is a magical space – and not just because of the ethereal feel Lucy has created with the exquisite ceiling. Its elegance belies the fact that the cupboards on either side of the chimneypiece are close-at-hand repositories of domestic ephemera. So, too, is the built-in storage under the staircase opposite. ‘As a designer, you are always working in this slightly liminal state, between practical and whimsical or imaginative,’ says Lucy, who collaborated on the project with CKW Architects.

That balance was particularly required on this project for a young American couple who were expecting their first child when they bought the house (their second was due by the time it was finished). ‘We wanted to create a family home, but we had no idea what it was like to have children,’ the wife explains. This lower ground floor is very much a family space (on the other side of the dining room is a small sitting room). ‘And, somehow, Lucy designed it so that we can pack all of the children’s things away in 20 minutes, then have friends round for dinner in a room that feels special.’

The couple purchased this house only after being gazumped on another. ‘It was the best thing that could have happened,’ says the wife. ‘This house was so much more charming.’ Amazingly, shortly after signing the papers, they discovered that it had been the childhood home of a friend of a friend in New York. It had not been redecorated for a number of years and needed redoing, but, as Lucy explains, ‘It has always felt like a lovely house and they were keen to keep that feeling.’

On the raised ground floor is a delightful drawing room in which antique, contemporary and classic styles of upholstered furniture mingle happily. It is smart and sophisticated, with off-white walls and reclaimed wooden flooring enhanced with just the right amount of colour. One of the most pleasing details was suggested by the husband, who asked that the single door to the room be changed to half-width double doors to avoid the sofa being blocked when it was open. Lucy took the idea and ran with it, upholstering the front and back of the doors with different fabrics and adding expressive squiggle patterns with bronze upholstery nails.