A reception room in the same period the house remembers.
Soft sage green walls, a blush alcove, and a botanical wallpaper carrying the chimney breast. Sympathetic decoration for a 1930s reception room with leaded bay windows, original cornicing and a marble fireplace.
The owners wanted something honest to the period without becoming a museum room. We landed on a deep sage for the main walls, a soft pink in the chimney recess, and a Cole and Son botanical print papered behind the fireplace. The cornicing was carefully cut in by hand, ceiling left in a quiet warm white.
- Walls
- Ceiling
- Cornicing
- Wallpaper
- Fireplace surround
What was done.
The wallpaper was hung in long drops up the chimney breast, with every seam butted and rolled flat. The fireplace surround stayed as it was, the marble cleaned but otherwise left alone.
How it was made.
The hardest piece was the cornice. The original plaster work has a dentil run with slightly uneven spacing, which means the colour line has to be cut by eye rather than by tape. We cut it in two passes, the second only to lift any cloudiness from the first.
How it feels now.
In afternoon light the bay windows throw a soft pattern across the parquet, and the sage holds the room together without dominating it. The fireplace finally feels like a focal point rather than something the rest of the room is politely arranged around.
They treated the house with the kind of care we hoped someone would, eventually. The room feels like itself again.Helen M. · Highgate
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