THE JOURNAL
YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST
WOW!house 2023 wasn’t just fabulous day out, but a test-bed of new ideas for its designers, and a potent source of inspiration for visitors. Here are some of its most influential takeaways
W
OW!house is a showhouse rather than a real home, which means that its designers were able to let their
imaginations fly, perhaps
going bigger and bolder than they might for a real-life client. However, it is also full of transferable ideas, as well as common threads that tell us a lot about the design zeitgeist. The house was also absolutely packed with stories,
whether to do with the overall concept of a room, the craftsmanship within it or the minute details that together create a sense of cohesion. It was certainly too much to take in on one trip, so it’s worth revisiting some of the rooms that had powerful lessons for how interiors are shaping up for the future.
THE COLOUR SWATCH TO WATCH Designer Timothy Mather said that he wanted his Day Room (sponsored by Miles + Alexander Lamont + Lauren Hwang New York) to capture the mood of a room when the sun sets, using luxurious silk-wrapped walls to create that feeling of gentle warmth. The walls’ ochre colour – like gold, but without the metallic finish – was a hue that appeared in many of WOW!house’s other rooms. In Iksel’s Entrance Foyer, Los Angeles-based Mark
D. Sikes mixed and matched fabric and wallcovering from Iksel’s Safavid collection (the first time the collection had been revealed to the public) with sumptuous gold-coloured passementerie from Houlès. The Drummonds Principal Bathroom by Barlow & Barlow featured rough-plastered ochre walls; and the House of Rohl bathroom designed by Studio Mica was a study in multiple shades of brown and ochre, full of earthy materials and rich textures.
A TRICK OF THE EYE “Trompe l’oeil is the name of the game in decoration. You don’t want things to look too real. Awful!” So said Nicky Haslam at the WOW!talk he took part in, along with his design partner for the WOW!house Legend Room, Colette van den Thillart. Haslam is known for the theatrical flair he brings to his work, and the Legend Room had a stage-set quality, with low walls and twisted columns that created a perspective that drew the eye into the main seating area. There were other examples of visual trickery. Joy
Moyler created a sense of place in her Dining Room with a huge lightbox mounted with an image of Portofino – the view from one of her client’s houses. In the House of Rohl bathroom, clever lighting silhouetted tropical plants against a screen of fabric, suggesting a lush imaginary garden just beyond the window. Designer Tom Bartlett’s Morning Room for sponsor
de Gournay featured tour-de-force hand-painted silk walling that was a perspective architectural sketch writ large, with a viaduct receding into the distance, a rain- lashed cloudy sky and rolling hills. Bartlett amplified the trompe l’oeil even further with a tongue-in-cheek bespoke rug that was intended to look like floorboards.
TOTALLY FLOORED Not a surface was ignored in the WOW!house rooms. The 2023 edition built on 2022’s year’s beautiful ceiling treatments (Clare Gaskin put a Schumacher woven palm wallcovering on her Study ceiling, in a nod to her Caribbean heritage, while in the Martin Moore Kitchen, Henry Prideaux specified a metal- leaf wallcovering from Altfield, whose metallic gleam caught the sparkle of a gold disco ball). However, this
OPPOSITE: Golden ochre was a recurring colour within the rooms of WOW!house 2023, established from the get-go in the
Iksel Entrance Foyer, designed by Mark D. Sikes. Iksel unveiled its Safavid collection for the first time, with ‘Safavid Stripe’ used for the tented ceiling as well as for the drapery that framed the scenic wallcovering
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