Home tour: inside a colourful Mid-Victorian townhouse in Kensington, London, embracing ‘jolie laide’

For the founder and creative director of Rebecca Hughes Interiors, the opportunity to work with a client who was genuinely open to colour, pattern and experimentation was particularly exciting.

“Rather than having to persuade the client to be bolder, the challenge was almost the reverse: she wanted us to push the design further,” she explains.

Hughes recalls one of her favourite moments: presenting the initial moodboards to the homeowner. “They were already colourful, but when we presented them she essentially told us they weren’t bold enough. That set the tone for the entire project—we kept adding colour, drama and, eventually, more leopard print!”

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A restrained or neutral interior was never the intention. The homeowner wanted the house to feel “uplifting, energised, and full of personality”, with each room offering a distinct experience as she moved through the house.

The challenge was to bring this abundance into a property that initially felt grey, dark and enclosed. The interiors needed to feel more open and receive more natural light, while accommodating a layered decorative scheme without becoming chaotic.

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Hughes and her team addressed this through architectural interventions, opening up the staircase and introducing an internal window to bring light into the previously dark hallway.

“Pink became an important connecting colour, particularly in the hallway, which is painted in Little Greene’s Hammock,” she continues. “While for the other rooms, we deliberately used strong, saturated and joyful colours to reflect the client’s personality.”

The living areas on the first floor were reworked substantially, reshaping the circulation through the house to make it feel more open and allow the rooms to reveal themselves in sequence.

Here, colour and pattern establish a distinct identity for each space. A bright pink sofa anchors the living room, while green metro tiles from Mandarin Stone wrap the kitchen walls.

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“The idea was not to create a single uniform palette, but to allow every room to feel like a different experience, almost transporting the owner somewhere else, while still belonging to the same house,” Hughes says.

Alongside bespoke cabinetry painted in House of Hackney’s woad blue provides a contrasting focal point, Schumacher’s fabrics frame selected doorways and French windows, drawing attention to the transitions between spaces.

“They draw you into the next room and make each space feel more celebrated and curated, while also helping the rooms feel larger,” Hughes elaborates.

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Additionally, textiles provide much of the decorative framework, with nature offering another source of inspiration through florals, birds, botanical motifs and animal prints. Velvet upholstery, antique rugs, patterned wallpapers and printed fabrics bring texture and pattern into the interiors.

The homeowner’s affinity for jolie laide—a French expression that translates literally to “pretty-ugly”—informed the mix of furnishings and decorative elements. Antiques, oriental cabinets, ethnic rugs, contemporary pieces and existing artwork were brought together for their individual character, rather than to achieve a uniform look.

“It was also important that we retained many of her existing pieces rather than replacing everything,” Hughes says. “She wanted the house to have a sense of patina, so that it felt collected and evolved rather than as though everything had been bought and installed at the same time.”

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Vintage and antique pieces were reupholstered or customised, giving them a new lease of life while preserving their place in the home.

“More broadly, the project was about embracing the unexpected and finding beauty in combinations that aren’t necessarily obvious,” she continues.

Upstairs, the private quarters continue the room-by-room approach to colour.

In the guest bathroom, terracotta introduces a warmer, earthier note, while in the walk-in wardrobe—converted from an existing bathroom—Soane’s Berlioz wallpaper in sunflower yellow creates a distinct decorative identity.

Additionally, a small box room became the principal en-suite bathroom, where the adjoining doorway into the principal bedroom became a focal point through the arched bookcase painted in Farrow & Ball’s Bancha sage green.

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In the principal bedroom, Schumacher’s Les Oiseaux Panel Set in Blush, a petal-pink Chinoiserie-style wallpaper, is paired with a vibrant tangerine velvet bed from Soho Home.

The combination brings together a delicate, bird-patterned backdrop and a bold block of colour, capturing the homeowner’s preference for contrasts that might not ordinarily be paired.

“The principal bedroom and its transition into the en-suite is a particular favourite,” Hughes concludes. “I love that sequence because it captures the whole philosophy of the house: each space has its own personality, but the colours, patterns and details flow into one another.”

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