14/06/24

Interiors — Rose Uniacke, London Home

Inside interior designer Rose Uniacke’s Neo-Georgian home...

Renowned for her mastery of refined and atmospheric interiors, Rose Uniacke rescued this historic light-drenched fixer-upper from decades of abandonment, and, in collaboration with architect Vincent Van Duysen, restored it to its former glory, creating a serene urban sanctuary for her family.

We have swooned over images of this house for many years, and below is a selection of our favourite quotes and rooms. It is a huge yet magical project that Uniacke recalls thinking about for over three years, "I often thought about how I might tame its space, just enough to become liveable. Three years later, it was still there. Nobody else would touch it, and we took the plunge."

Rose wanted to assess everything in its rawest form before deciding the concept and feel. "Once we’d stripped it, the house was sublime. It felt like an abandoned palazzo, with extraordinary volume in the rooms, and wonderful layers of distressed colours from years of decoration. The restoration and correct replacement of missing period detail was essential, But after that I wanted to add a fresh contemporary flavour, without the house losing its period identity."

Watch the video walk-through of the home, here.

"As much as I wanted to highlight its architectural merits and its relationship with art, it was also important that the house was a home that could be used, not just looked at. I have never been interested in the overly precious or self consciously designed. I am interested in how life works in a space - the energy of it, and how it makes you feel. Is it adaptable? Can it stimulate, relax? Can you breathe, can you think? I am alive to the challenge of how all these things can combine."