Naturally festive

ABOVE Emma has combined sleek details with a cosy, country aesthetic to create a welcoming home fit for city living. RIGHT Crittall doors from Fabco Sanctuary separate the sitting room and library area, hinting at the original layout of this two-up, two-down townhouse. The Balmoral table by Neptune extends to seat six and the dining chairs are a mix of Flamant’s Medy chairs and Neptune’s Mowbray chairs.

While for some, the arrival of the festive season means a mad dash to the shops in search of those elusive gifts, for interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch, it prompts a long country walk with her family, collecting the natural foliage that she will later use to decorate their London home. With vases of greenery on worktops, and fir garlands twinkling with white lights lining mantels and even strung above the roll-top bath in the principal suite, this is a stylishly unfussy Christmas affair with a firm nod to the colours and textures of nature – much like the design approach that permeates the family’s Parson’s Green property.

Creating a connection with nature was one of the driving forces behind the vision for this Victorian house. “I wanted it to feel like a respite in the city,” explains Emma. As the founder of interior design studio Sims Hilditch, Emma is a proponent of the timeless English country house aesthetic, redefined to reflect the needs of our contemporary lifestyles. She applied her expert decorator’s eye to the interiors, but not before considerable thought went into reconfiguring the terraced house – originally a two-up, two-down worker’s cottage – to create an expansive, well-conceived space for city living. “People say it’s now a Tardis,” laughs Emma.

Working with her architectural planning team at Sims Hilditch, and with input from her husband, John, the co-founder of homeware brand Neptune, who is “passionate about architecture”, Emma set about restructuring the house to best serve the family’s needs, eking out every inch of space to ensure the house worked hard from top to bottom.

The couple dug out a basement as well as building into the loft to enable them to create four bedrooms, all with en suites, plus a media room and utility area. Emma adheres to the ‘do it once, do it well’ mantra. “You only do a project like this once, so if you can budget to do it