Beauty and practicality join forces at Angus and Charlotte Buchanan's London house

Few young couples, with two small children in tow, would actively go on the hunt to buy an ‘untouched wreck’ of a house. But then few are Charlotte and Angus Buchanan, the dynamic husband-and-wife duo who run design studio Buchanan Studio and turn their hands to everything from interiors to branding and event design. ‘We were looking for a blank canvas that we could turn into a calm, interesting and joyful family home,’ explains Charlotte. They had been living in Kensal Rise in what Angus describes as their ‘pre-marriage, pre-babies house’, but were craving somewhere with a bit more space. ‘We realised that we needed to look a bit further afield to find something within our budget and that was when we discovered Harlesden,’ says Angus. They sold up in Kensal Rise, moved into a rental and began their search in earnest with a few clear criteria: a Victorian or Edwardian house, with as many original features as possible and a large garden.

After about a year of trawling, they happened upon the one: a three floor semi-detached Edwardian house in Harlesden, which hadn’t been touched for years, with a garden so large and wonderfully wild that they couldn’t actually see the bottom of it. ‘The old lady here only lived in the front two rooms on the ground floor and the rest of the house was just endless random rooms that were stuffed full of generations worth of stuff,’ recalls Charlotte. ‘Windows were missing, there were pigeons flying around upstairs. It was obvious that it needed a complete overhaul,’ Angus adds. Still, that didn’t deter them and in 2019, after a year of negotiations, the house was theirs.

Specific ideas for the home had started to take shape before they had even found this exact house. ‘We knew from the outset we wanted a stainless steel kitchen and we knew that we wanted the living room to be the complete opposite to the dark green one we had in Kensal Rise, with calm, relaxing tones,’ explains Charlotte. First, however, it was a case of getting the shell right and embarking on a year-long building project. On the ground floor, the sitting room was knocked through to the playroom with double doors connecting the two, while a pod room was added between the second and third floors to accommodate what is now the children's bathroom. On the first floor, two bedrooms were knocked through to create a generous bedroom and bathroom suite for Angus and Charlotte. At the other end of the room, an opening was knocked through to another small bedroom, which now functions as their dressing room.

The largest architectural intervention was at the rear, where they extended out by 6 metres and pushed out into the side-return to create a huge open-plan kitchen and dining area, with space for a pantry and laundry room. ‘We knew we didn’t want a low, flat-ceiling, so we consulted with a very clever local planning consultant to get permission for a pitched, almost double-height space,’ explains Angus. The result is now a light and airy space, with a concrete floor, a tongue-and-groove boarded ceiling, a glazed, walk-in pantry, and a wall of vast sash windows that looks out onto the garden. ‘We wanted the inside-outside feeling, but didn’t want a wall of bifold doors,’ explains Charlotte. ‘There is something so romantic about throwing open the windows and they’re also a nod to the house’s Edwardian roots.’ A stainless steel kitchen forms a pleasing contrast and runs down one side of the space with a parallel island. ‘We twisted the arm of a designer we work with on commercial kitchens for restaurants to do this one,’ explains Angus. ‘It’s completely toddler and dog proof, which is good with our 6-month old puppy.’

Their approach to the house mirrored how they work in the office: Charlotte took charge of the organisational side, while Angus provided the creative vision. It was also a collaboration: ‘together we wanted to create a space that would match all of our needs, while also being beautiful,’ says Angus. Some pieces were acquired well before they bought the house: the double doors between Angus and Charlotte’s bedroom and bathroom, for instance, came from English Salvage, while the oak architraves, which now provide theatrical entrances to the children's bathroom and Angus and Charlotte’s bedroom, also came from there. ‘When I was working in set design before setting up Buchanan Studio, I would always be thinking about a view-point and the little vignettes I could create,’ says Angus. ‘This hugely informs my approach to interiors and I love introducing those unexpected elements.’

Although they opted for a calm, neutral palette throughout, the house’s design revolves around unexpected, often colourful, features. The bathrooms are a good case in point: in Charlotte and Angus’s for instance, they added pitched roof pods at either end of the room – one for the loo and one for a shower – which they have tiled in a checkerboard pattern using pink and white tiles from Mosaic Factory. ‘It was a practical choice to separate the loo and shower from the main bathroom and our bedroom, but it was also a chance to do something a bit theatrical,’ explains Angus. ‘Our children lovingly refer to them as our sheds.’ Equally unexpected is the cheerful children's bathroom that unfolds behind the salvaged oak architrave, with walls in pink, white and yellow tiles from Topps Tiles, a pastel pink bath, loo and sink and a black and white tiled checkerboard floor underfoot. On the ground floor, Angus and Charlotte added delft tiles to line either side of the double doors between the living room and playroom. ‘Most of the fireplaces are original, so we didn’t need to touch them and this felt like a fun alternative way to use the tiles,’ explains Angus.

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Unsurprisingly, the house is also a test ground for many of Buchanan Studio’s own designs. In the bedroom, for example, a bed canopy is suspended from the ceiling and adorned in a soft white linen, which conjures up Ibiza. ‘We wanted the feeling of a four-poster bed, but in a light, airy and modern way,’ explains Angus, who designed the lightweight aluminium frame and is hoping to soon offer it as a product. ‘Many of our designs are borne out of a need for something that we need for ourselves,’ he adds, gesturing to a velvet-upholstered ottoman in the playroom that he designed, which again strikes the perfect balance between functional and beautiful. Its frilly skirt hides storage boxes, which are packed full with their children's toys, and it also features a secondary cover underneath the velvet, made from Buchanan Studio’s ‘Ticking Rose’ fabric. ‘It has its day clothes and its evening clothes,’ jokes Charlotte. ‘We just whip the velvet on in the evening and the room takes on a totally different feel.’

The studio’s recently launched fabric collection – which includes stripes, checks and a floral – features liberally throughout the house. Since the walls are mainly white, the fabrics are brilliant vehicles for bringing in splashes of colour. In the sitting room, it is through a sofa of their design – a longer version of the ‘Studio Chair’, which they are soon to add to the product offering – that is upholstered in its ‘Studio Stipe’ in ruby, alongside an ottoman Angus designed that is upholstered in ‘Ticking Rose’. In the laundry room, moody green walls and Victorian stained glass window are enlivened by under-worktop curtains made from ‘Stripe Two’ in vert, while upstairs in their daughter Riva’s room, a charming bed canopy has been whipped up from its ‘Stripe Two’ in ochre and a check from Ian Mankin. ‘The house was always going to be a backdrop for what we do in the studio,’ says Angus. ‘But first and foremost, it is a practical and happy family home.’

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