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“Blingy” is the best way interior designer Leo Wood can describe the former kitchen in this south London townhouse. With textured magenta cabinets, mock-Roman mosaic flooring, and more recessed lighting than you can count, the design direction was more than a little confused. Wood, the founder of Kinder Design, was hired by the new homeowner to improve the house’s functionality and feel. Part of the brief included softening up the kitchen—but there was never any talk of ripping everything out and starting again. “The client is a climate-change scientist, and if there’s a more sustainable, unique, and exciting option, then she’ll go for it,” says Wood.
Working with the existing millwork—magenta paint and all!—was a fun challenge for the designer. But it was made easier by the client’s love of pink and maximalist aesthetic. “She couldn’t bear anything that wasn’t a vibrant color,” explains Wood. Here, she walks us through the changes they did make and how those considered tweaks took this space from flashy to homey.
The Salvaged Countertop
When Wood got the green light to update the sleek white countertops to butcher block, she went to raid reclamation specialist Retrouvius’ yard in north London, where she found slabs of painted teak recovered from a school science lab. Stripping and sanding them back revealed a warm, reddish tone that worked perfectly with the cabinets. As for the unwanted marble? Naturally, it didn’t go to waste. They had the stone picked up by a local salvage company, paying it forward to someone else’s reno.
The Painterly Backsplash
With Wood’s creative juices in full flow, she was inspired by a reference image of a space where every single wall tile was different. “I knew that if the idea was quirky and zany, then the client would gravitate to it,” she says. Cue a custom design by Charlotte Moore, an architect by day and a budding ceramicist by night. Moore’s concept was a distortion of pollen under the microscope in saturated color. She handmade and triple-glazed each of the 1,200 tiles. “It was a labor of love,” says Wood, who decided to really show off her work by opting for a smaller vent hood in order to maximize the wall space.
The Playful Lighting
Not only were the previous recessed bulbs distracting, they didn’t add any personality to the open-concept kitchen. “Because of the client’s character, at every turn I wanted to do something fun,” explains the designer. Wood rectified this by placing a pair of simple pendants from Fritz Fryer above the island and a cluster of wicker shades over the dining table produced by Chimbarongo, a Chilean enterprise where local artisans weave onto discarded plastic bottles.
The Peekaboo Window
Wood decided to divert attention away from the glass pane by peeling off the transparent tree sticker that was there before and painting the frame White Tie by Farrow & Ball. This simple move brought all the attention back to the tiles. “It’s a soft, yellow-white, which we continued over the ceiling and proved really transformative,” says the designer.
The Cohesive Flooring
The last thing Wood addressed was the flooring. “Because of the wooden worktop and crazy colors in the tiles, I felt it should be a single, pale surface,” she explains. Had the owners not reached construction fatigue by this point, she would have gone with rubber. But for a quick fix, she opted to paint the existing planks and tiles to unify them. “It’s a small move, but the duck-egg blue really makes the kitchen pop. It has this lightness, which almost makes it feel like an art studio,” says Wood.