Notting Hill Flat — Light-Filled Rooms, Vintage Notes, Marble Quiet
Notting Hill Flat places a Grade II listed townhouse in London, United Kingdom, back into daily circulation with a clear, contemporary hand by WER Studio. The house shifts to an open, light-forward upper level and a calmer bedroom level below, preserving the building’s character while updating its workings. Across the plan, crafted cabinetry, refined finishes, and measured interventions turn a historic shell into a family home.
Morning light runs across new hardwood boards and lifts the grain. It tracks along white half-height boiseries, then rests on a cabinet folded into the paneling.
This is a renovated Grade II listed townhouse in Notting Hill, reworked by WER Studio as a family house with an open top level and private rooms below. The throughline stays tactile: wood, stone, and crafted storage shape how the rooms read, while a quiet palette steadies the period shell.
On entry, the original character holds its ground. Then the new work takes over with restraint, using tone, texture, and joinery to make one coherent field of rooms.
Set the Tone
A continuous run of hardwood flooring stitches living, dining, and kitchen into one axis. It’s a calm base for the layered program and the revived timber beams. White boiseries wrap the living room, their crisp datum catching shadows across the day and framing a wall-length cabinet that hides a TV on a lift.
Curate the Room
Furniture lands deliberately, few pieces with clear voices rather than a crowd. A vintage Scandinavian armchair, an Alky by Giancarlo Piretti, and Joe Armitage’s floor lamp carry time and texture. They meet a restrained envelope, so the eye moves from wood grain to woven fabric to the soft gleam of metal without static.
Open the Kitchen
New apertures pull daylight deep: replaced rear windows and a skylight brighten the work surface and the eating edge. The main countertop runs the length of the room, then turns as a slim perch for quick meals and easy conversation. Chrome-and-leather stools by Charlotte Perriand ground the corner, with a Tassel sconce adding a warm point of light over the run.
Craft Storage
Cabinetry does the heavy lifting. Kitchen units use retractable door panels that slide away to reveal working bays, then close to read as one plane. Elsewhere, drawers nestle beneath the dining sofa, cupboards occupy stair landings, and tall cabinets slip above stair walls to reclaim voids. Even the required fire door at the entry aligns with the paneling and retracts into the wall to keep sightlines clear.
Calm Below
Bedrooms move to the lowered lower ground floor after a complex excavation that lifts headroom and draws in air. Doors open to the rear patio for daylight and a short step outside. In the primary suite, modular fabric-faced panels in wooden frames extend from headboard to closet, softening acoustics and linking rest and storage in one gesture.
Stone and Garden
Bathrooms are lined with large marble slabs—installation in this tight urban setting required choreography, but the broad veining earns its place. Outside, the facades stay true to their era, while a slim metal stair reaches the main level and garden beds pull green toward the interior. Nothing shouts.
Late light grazes the panels and the oiled boards, then slips toward the patio. The house holds its 19th-century poise, but the daily rhythms now run on crafted wood, generous light, and storage that does its work in quiet.
Photography by Fran Parente
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