Wealden Times | WT186 | August 2017 | Wedding supplement inside

Above left: Lucinda sourced the velvet sofa in the playroom from DFS and the zebra rug is IKEA. The wallpaper is ‘Honolulu’ Palm
Green from Graham & Brown Above right: A photograph of her grandfather has pride of place on a cow hide drum that belonged to
Lucinda’s parents
runner – IKEA – and an array of candles reflecting the trend
for Scandinavian ‘hygge’ or cosiness. “We had these all out
around the BBQ at the weekend... which was lovely though
it did all start to look a bit like a vigil!” says Lucinda, with
typical lack of pretence. I notice an ancient Singer sewing
machine in the corner: “My mum picked that up in the 80s,
from an ad in the local paper. My parents used to store all
their plastic supermarket bags under it!” Not any more...
“A lot of things in the house are from my parents: the
dining table, the Arab chest in the living room, the cow-skin
drums... they were all just things they had in the garage.
My mum was from Uganda and my dad grew up in east
Africa, so a lot of things in the house are from Africa.” Such
personal items prevent the rooms looking like a brochure.
French doors lead through to an equally dramatic living
room, which Lucinda has painted in Farrow & Ball’s
Hague Blue, with an unusual feature wall painted to look
almost industrial. “It’s a special lime paint that comes in
powder form, from a company called Kalklitir. The shade
is Concrete.” Dark and muted shades make the perfect
backdrop for pops of colour such as the bright pink velvet
cushion on the sofa and the ‘Be Big’ pop-art-style print
from Print Club London on the wall above. Opposite is
another quirky print, also from Print Club London, called
66 on the Moon. What with the dark blue, almost black,
walls, huge round mirror, round clock, and the print it
feels as if there is a bit of a moon theme. “Oh, I hadn’t
thought of that!” says Lucinda. Either way, it works.
Leading off the living room is a room which is currently
Sienna’s play room, though not for long. “It’s going to become
a bar area,” says Lucinda. “Poor Sienna’s going to have
nowhere to play, but she just runs around the house anyway
so she doesn’t necessarily need a dedicated space.” The room
works well as playroom and prospective bar, with retro palmleaf
wallpaper, a mock zebra-skin on the floor and two large
African drums as low-level tables. “The sofa I bought with
a voucher from DFS, after we collaborated on Instagram,”
adds Lucinda, highlighting some of the benefits of
57 wealdentimes.co.uk