A DESIGN FOR LIVING
MANY DESIGNER PROPERTIES ARE MORE MUSEUM THAN HOME, BUT NOT CAMILLA JOHNSON’S FAMILY-FRIENDLY WANDSWORTH PAD, DISCOVERS CHERYL MARKOSKY
W
hether it’s a knockdown drag-out fight or a New Age-y Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin ‘conscious uncoupling’, divorce is
usually a traumatic event. However, interior designer Camilla Johnson’s marital breakup ultimately led to a happily blended family unit and a revolutionary approach to their new home.
After a few years in a smaller, ‘post-uncoupled’ house on Clapham Common North with her daughter Georgina, now 19, Camilla met her new partner, Julian Banks, a financial printer in the City. Forming a post-modern family with Banks’s three children - Josh, now 27, Harry, 26, and Tickle, 20 - she quickly realised she had to upsize to a property large enough to accommodate everyone in the new coalition and gain a much-needed garden.
“I wanted to move us all somewhere that would last,” she explains. That turned out to be a semi-detached, end-of-terrace house in Brodrick Road, bought in 2001 for £850,000, and which, luckily, was in a reasonable state. “We didn’t do much to begin with except change a few bathrooms around and join two bedrooms at the top of the house.”
Before getting builders in for the big revamp, Camilla had a six-month period to sort out a mortgage, which turned into an ideal period of “thinking time” to formulate her ideas. For instance, she worked out that most Victorian houses aren’t very well proportioned. “They’re top heavy with lots of bedrooms, while the living space below doesn’t
equate with the sleeping quarters. I wanted to create a house in which we’d use every part.” And so she did, basically by moving a few rooms around and dropping a few walls, she declares.
Camilla also dug out a space-enhancing basement with a good-sized utility room, wine store, bay- fronted double bedroom - which she’s currently using as her office - cloakroom and double shower room. This level could have become “bottom heavy”, as many people with basement fever frantically install cinemas, pool rooms and saunas - anything to fill the space, really - but she wanted only rooms that the family would actually use.
Camilla also did away with the long, thin ground-floor reception room with TV at one end and small seating area at the other – which meant there wasn’t one place where the whole family could gather - in favour of what she calls “a smart sitting room”, taking up two-thirds of the area. “I moved the fireplace and put double doors in the hall to admit more light and make the room look bigger,” she comments. “It’s a great space for high days and holidays.”
The floor was dropped in the remaining third and a “kitchen working area” installed, including culinary goodies such as two ovens and two warming drawers, a boiling water tap and a very practical larder
Camilla Johnson and Bugsy at home
cupboard. Camilla also opened up the entire level, adding a dining room zone and lounge/TV space.
“The kitchen area itself isn’t huge,” she observes, “as I’ve taken all the machines, including a second fridge, and extra pots and pans downstairs to the utility room.”
In addition, Camilla built a whole wall of cupboards round the fireplace, which you just push to open. A great believer in having loads of storage, so the house doesn’t ever look cluttered, she’s also provided coat and shoe cupboards “and even more kitchen storage”.
When it comes to choosing colours, Camilla denies outright hating white, something she’s been accused of in the past. She does acknowledge it can be quite harsh, so she’s happier with off-white tones to create a soft, relaxed feeling and make rooms appear bigger. And the real reason she favours muted shades, she confesses, is the fact that she owns a yellow Labrador, Bugsy, who tends to shed. “If you keep it neutral, you don’t see the dog hair quite so much!”
What makes the Brodrick Road house so dog- and family-friendly, however, is Camilla’s attention to detail. Rather than being tempted by a mega-modern
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