Pourquoi pas? Why not?
That happy-go-lucky phrase was the guiding design and style theory for this eye-popping London townhouse, developed by Bodil Bjerkvik for a French businessman who splits his time involving the English capital and a relatives chateau around Luxembourg. Beetle eco-friendly, lacquered partitions? Pourquoi pas? Fanciful wallpaper all around? Pourquoi pas? Coloration and pattern galore? Pourquoi pas?
The residence in problem was a usual Chelsea townhouse, renovated in 2006, with loads of floors but not a good deal of mild. The customer had moved in during the pandemic and desired to inject the spot with warmth, texture, and color—a little bit of armor towards London’s dreary temperature.
“After you do 1 wintertime below you comprehend,” claims Bjerkvik, a professional at combatting seasonal slumps from expanding up in Norway. “You need colour. You want levels. You want what I phone ‘an interiors hug.’ I desired the customer to walk in the doorway and smile.” So appropriate in the entryway she hung a swirling Murano glass light-weight fixture and a portray by Sebastian Helling, laid the ground with lively French carpets, and put in a fancifully patterned scalloped-edged window therapy to match nearby toss pillows. A cheerful amuse bouche, so to converse, for the relaxation of the house.
“I desired a dwelling that was vibrant and cozy, like the English do so nicely,” says her consumer. “Bodil is really superior with colors and textures and I dependable her inventive flair.”
Around the dwelling, Bjerkvik employed people decorative instruments to combat opportunity drabness. To take care of the low ceilings in the sitting down space, she went with an all-about high gloss eco-friendly: “It produces much more height to truly encapsulate the home,” she explains of the colour, tinged with a bit of yellow. Her client raised an eyebrow, but in the conclude he went for it. To broaden the glass-enclosed back again space, they established a mirror wall with community artisan Rupert Bevan. And in smaller spaces like the powder rooms, for case in point, she utilized wallpaper to enliven—selecting bold patterns like De Gourney’s Deco Monkeys and Schumacher’s Citrus Backyard garden, by Josef Frank. In the eating space, likewise, a red designed-in shelving device was lined with marbleized paper.
For the furnishings, Bjerkvik, who clocked quite a few decades in the artwork world, scoured shops for vintage and antique dialogue items that would incorporate significant character (she’s operating on an on the web shop the place she’ll market her finds). “I like to have anything aged in every room. I imagine it provides it gravitas. Or else it appears to be like a furnishings catalog,” she points out. In the living room, for instance. Rose Uniacke velvet sofas sit with classic French antiques and a collectable Ingrid Donat espresso desk. Throughout the home, relatives heirlooms, like a set of 18th-century chairs that have been in the client’s relatives for 270 many years, are combined into Bjerkvik’s colorful cocktail, lending the residence a additional own tone.
“In the stop, the household feels happier and simpler to dwell in,” states her pleased customer of the temper-improving redo. “Every area has its possess notion, but fits in with the next.”
