Surrey Homes | SH51 | January 2019 | Wedding supplement inside

Full English
Perhaps it’s the rigour of its vertical plan, but the classic townhouse seems to
inspire owners to be wonderfully bold with paint and decoration
Ros Byam Shaw’s beautiful book,
Perfect English Townhouse is a
tribute to one of our loveliest of
vernacular home styles – the multi-storeyed,
terraced or semi-detached, uniquely
urban dwelling that is the townhouse.
The thirteen houses featured in the
book date from 1670 to 1965, but
while they span historic eras from the
Stuarts, through Georgian, Regency
and Victorian, right up to the reign
of our own dear Queen, they share a
special appeal: a familiarity of layout and
proportion that just feels right to the eye.
On top of all that is common among
them, each of the houses in the book
is wonderfully quirky and original,
packed full of ideas to aspire to –
repaying repeated visits to the pages.
One theme that particularly jumped
out at us as worthy of further study
is the way all the houses balance very
strong colour and vivid prints, with lots
of art, features and collections – yet
never look cluttered, messy, or hectic.
We’ve come to the conclusion that the
secret is having a certain proportion of
balancing neutral tones in natural materials,
be it in original wood floorboards, linen
upholstery, sisal flooring, bamboo, rattan
and wood furniture, or wicker details.
Here are some of our favourite examples
– followed by suggestions of how to achieve
such exquisite colour balance at home.
▲ This 18th century house in a South London square was restored after being
previously divided into flats. Frank Hollmeyer uses this first floor room as a study.
The panelling, which he put back in, is painted in Farrow & Ball’s Brassica
The first floor drawing room of the
same house is painted in Farrow & Ball’s
Cale Green, a flattering background for
the 17th century Dutch flower paintings.
The cushions are made of antique Middle
Eastern fabric from Susan Deliss, who also
made the ikat lampshades
SH Interiors Supplement
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