Kate van Vollenhoven favours the romantic, English country house aesthetic; her husband Ivo prefers clean-lined modernity. The result – as their London townhouse proves – is a harmonious marriage of opposites
FEATURE SERENA FOKSCHANER PHOTOGRAPHY RACHAEL SMITH
So many things in life are underpinned by compromise, not least doing up a house, and Kate and Ivo van Vollenhoven’s home in West London is a case in point. “When it comes to decorating, Ivo and I often disagree,” explains Kate, a former television producer. Her taste, she says, is for the romantic English country house aesthetic – a salad of colour and texture, while husband Ivo, who runs a film company, leans towards a leaner, more modern aesthetic. So when they embarked on the transformation of their stucco-fronted home the question was: how could they reconcile their tastes? Enter interior designer Abbie de Bunsen.
While an interior designer can be many things – confidante, counsellor, personal shopper – in this instance, Abbie drew on her training to act as a mediator. Inspired by the work of Italian mid-century architects Piero Portaluppi and Carlo Scarpa – noted for their use of surface pattern offset by restrained, pared-back silhouettes – she arrived at what she describes as “a happy halfway meeting point”. The result, behind the terraced house’s 19th-century exterior, where a deep flight of steps leads to the panelled front door, is an interior with a judicious combination of hand-painted wallcoverings and whimsical antiques offset by stretches of plain walls or unfussy upholstery. Romance is twinned with modernism in a marriage of opposites.
There was a point, however, on which Kate and Ivo, who have a 12-year-old son, were in complete agreement. “We share a love of hotels and we wanted this house to have the elegance of a five-star hotel,” explains Kate. “Not in a corporate, predictable way, but for an effect where spaces radiate the ease and comfort that comes from a considered floorplan: internal spaces flow, everything has its place and every room has a function.”
Before the couple could arrive at this point, there was work to be done on the four-storey property, not least to make the most of its views of the tree-shaded park it backs on to. “The last owners had lived here for 30 years. It had a warm and well-loved feel, with soul, but now it needed a new soul, one that reflected its new owners,” says Abbie.
“We had initially planned to move in and live in the house for a few years before deciding what to do, but Ivo is the world’s most impatient man,” laughs Kate. Soon
