The interior designer’s budget renovation

When the couple arrived for a viewing in late 2019 they were greeted by tired magnolia walls, but in a house with sound bones. “I don’t think the previous owner had touched the property since she moved in, in the 1970s,” Lywood says. Lywood and her husband saw the potential, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing. They bought the house soon after the viewing, but it would be August 2020 before they could move in, because of pandemic-related restrictions. Renovation planning took about a year, and building work began in January 2023 and was completed in May.

“When we got into the property we didn’t have any budget to renovate,” Lywood recalls. “Once we had saved up, one very challenging part of the build was that I was in the first trimester of my pregnancy and nauseous when the builders were at the house.” She gave birth to a daughter, Artemis, in October 2023.

Lywood has not shied away from using colour in her home, but then she should know what she’s doing — she is creative director of the Richmond-based interiors firm Q Design House. “As a studio we don’t really have a set style,” she says. “I’ve done a lot of houses that have a more neutral design. When we first moved in I did paint several of the rooms in neutral colours but the rooms felt really bland; this sort of house can take colour.”

The interiors choices were sympathetic to the property’s heritage, but cost constraints mean the couple have had to carefully consider where to save and where to splurge. The layout, over four floors, was not particularly practical for the family they hoped to have. “When we moved in we had bedrooms in the basement and on the top floor, and the living spaces were on the two middle floors. The kitchen was not really usable. We got by by replacing some of the appliances, knowing that we’ll do the kitchen properly later on,” she says.

Navigating the house’s grade II listing and its awkward intricacies, nooks and crannies was another challenge. Before they landed on the final design the couple had hoped to add an extension to the rear of the house, which involved knocking down an attached outhouse. “The planning application was rejected,” Lywood says. “However, it was not a complete waste — for the secondary application [which was accepted] I was able to use a lot of the documents, surveys and drawings made for the previous one and adjust them.

“The outhouse is not original, but it’s listed, so they wouldn’t let us remove that, our heritage expert told us. We had to scrap that plan. At the end of the day you don’t buy a Georgian property to rip it all apart. I started playing around with the layout and to work out the best use of the basement space.”

The second iteration of Lywood’s layout involved moving the kitchen into the basement, including opening up the wall and a few structural changes. The heritage expert was positive, especially given that this is where the original kitchen would have been located. “I still had to get permission — just listed building consent rather than a full planning application,” she says.

The ground floor redesign

The ground floor’s new layout houses two reception rooms: a main sitting area and a separate snug. Lywood had fantasised about dividing the spaces with Crittall doors, but these would have cost a minimum of £5,000, so she plumped for more affordable timber-framed glazed doors from LPD Doors (lpddoors.co.uk). Another purse-friendly trick was to buy the six cast-iron-style radiators unpainted. “It took ages to paint them myself, but it did save about £100 a radiator.”

The larger lounge is north-facing and doesn’t get much light. “I embraced the fact that it was dark and cosy and went for a blueish deep grey, Down Pipe from Farrow & Ball,” Lywood says. A memento of locations important to the couple hangs on the wall here. Lywood had it made as a birthday present for Julian. It features spots such as Durham (the couple met there at university in 2011), Miami (where Julian proposed on the beach) and Bandol on the Côte d’Azur, where they wed in 2017. Brentford is now on there too.

A few of the artworks in the house are by Lywood’s great-great-grandfather William McTaggart — a Scottish painter in the 19th century — including a sketch from the 1870s over a sofa and a grandfather clock. “I think the clock is a similar age to the property, dating from about 1717,” Lywood says.

The hand-me-down antique armchairs have been re-covered at a cost of £1,000 each (including fabric and upholstery). “I used Vanderhurd Paravento 1008-1 fabric [£174 a metre] for the backs only to help save cost, and the more affordable Andes Ecru from Warwick inside [£32 a metre]. Similar to the armchairs, in my bedroom I used an expensive fabric for the central striped panel on the headboard and then a cheaper fabric for the rest. It’s an example of how you can order a smaller quantity of a high-end fabric to help to reduce costs without sacrificing on finish,” she says.

The pale green, south-facing snug looks out over the garden. “I managed to source ceiling flush lights that covered existing holes, which saved us having to replaster the existing ceiling,” she says. The Plumb lights cost £64 each from Pooky (pooky.com), and the Pebble wool rug is from Dunelm (about £99, dunelm.com).

Lywood was concerned about the new basement kitchen/diner being dingy. “When it was two separate rooms they were both quite dark, but once we opened them up it felt a lot brighter than expected,” she says. “I was conscious to try and keep it as light as I could, which is part of the reason why I picked yellow [Farrow & Ball Citron] for the cabinets, because I didn’t want it to feel like a basement. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s Wimborne White, which has a very pale pink undertone, and the skirting and windows are painted a slightly darker colour [Farrow & Ball’s Slipper Satin], making the walls feel as bright as possible.”

After designing every cabinet to make best use of the “tricky and very tight” spaces, she employed a joiner to build the kitchen. “It worked out really well doing it bespoke because none of the walls are straight. We also had it painted on site, which helps with the finishing.”

In one of the 90cm-deep alcoves on either side of the chimney breast Lywood has fitted a deep pantry cupboard; in the other sits an integrated Fisher & Paykel American double fridge-freezer with “life-changing” drawers (from £3,030, fisherpaykel.com). “We had a very restricted size, but I managed to find one that fit perfectly. It’s one of my splurges,” she admits. Lywood fell in love with some hand-painted bee-pattern tiles (a nod to Brentford Football Club, nicknamed the Bees), which she fitted around her Smeg range. “The bee tiles were £25 each (decorumtiles.co.uk), so I only used four, around the cooker. The rest were plain and cost £1.90 each from Fired Earth; the tiles cost £300 in total,” she says.

The dining table is a £1,150 custom-made design bought from Etsy from the Manchester firm CraftyCreationsMCR (etsy.com), but the Rise & Fall School pendant ceiling light from the British brand Original BTC above it was a splurge (£339, hollowaysofludlow.com). “It was key because I wanted a pendant that we could move up and down,” she says. “The banquette seating was made by the joiner from MDF around the radiator [£2,500], and our upholsterer made a cushion [£700].”

The kitchen’s monochrome floor adds a period feel. Lywood used Calacatta and Bluestone tumbled marble tiles, from Mandarin Stone (mandarinstone.com) — a fitting choice, given that the basement would probably have had a flagstone floor. “Another trick: if I want something to feel really bright, I’ll add in some dark, contrasting accents. For example, where we’ve got the darker tiles on the floor, the darker colour helps to make the lighter one look brighter and more lifted,” Lywood says.

Instead of fitting a traditional island Lywood plumped for a smaller, movable version, which sits off the floor for less of a chunky look. The island’s 30mm solid marble worktop has a slightly chamfered finish, in keeping with the property’s age. “I opted for the ‘ogee edge’ on the island only to help save costs,” she says.

As for the kitchen electrics, she has followed a minimally invasive route. “We can’t put any downlights in, so it’s all low-level lighting from Pooky, which I prefer anyway: wall lights and LED lighting within the joinery,” she adds. The choice of unlacquered brass finishes for her hot water kitchen tap and cupboard handles was an investment at £1,680 (tradingdepot.co.uk), but one that will age over time for a more authentic look than polished brass.

The main bathroom beside the kitchen has one tiny window. Lywood has used a mid blue (Farrow & Ball’s De Nimes) on the walls and ceiling, and an arched shower screen that echoes the alcoves in the kitchen. In the hallway a thick door curtain using Laura Ashley for Ashley Wilde fabric (£750 for fabric and curtain construction) minimises drafts from the front door, while the stair runner is a plain carpet with a linen border to match the wall colour (Three Farm Green from Little Greene). “This is often a lot more cost-effective than buying a ready-made runner,” she says. “There are economies of scale when using a carpet and linen tape, so it is cheaper over lots of flights of stairs (but probably not as big a saving over a single flight). At my house we have four flights of stairs. The total runner cost that I spent was about £2,500, but if I had used a standard runner it would have cost around £4,500.”

Upstairs Lywood has painted Artemis’s room in a sunny yellow: Farrow & Ball’s Babouche. The laundry basket was a reasonable £39 from Urban Outfitters, and the world map is peel-and-stick wallpaper from Hovia (£39 a square metre, hovia.com). “I stuck it up myself when I was 30 weeks pregnant on a ladder,” she recalls.

“When considering your budget for renovating a property, the interior architecture elements are what can add more value to your home, especially when the design and installation has been completed to a good standard,” Lywood says. The distinction between interior architecture and FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment), she explains to clients, is that if you were to pick up a house and turn it upside down the items that would fall out are considered FF&E; anything that stays in place and is sold with the property is interior architecture. “When we had the house revalued [after the renovation],” Lywood says, “the property price increased quite significantly. The return on investment is approximately 150-200 per cent.”