Marlow & Sons
The Limewash House
A house that had been decorated four times in thirty years and had lost track of its own light. Everything came off the walls; limewash went on; the furniture was made for the rooms it stands in.
- Client
- A Georgian townhouse, Bath
- Industry
- Residential
- Size
- Five floors, eleven rooms
- Duration
- Fourteen months
- Services
- Full interior, furniture, lighting
- Pieces made for the house
- 22
- Limewash tones
- 4
- Recessed lights
- 0
The rooms
Tall, north-facing on the street side, with a garden elevation that catches the afternoon. Thirty years of papers and paints had made every room the same weight. The clients wanted quiet, and a house that would still look right in twenty years.
What we did
Stripped back to plaster and re-skimmed by hand. Four limewash tones across the house, each chosen for the way its room takes the light. Oak floors sanded and soaped rather than replaced. Twenty-two pieces of furniture drawn for the house and made in the workshop, from the kitchen to the beds. A lighting plan of forty fittings, none of them recessed.
What happened
The house was photographed for a magazine and the clients declined; it was their house. Two rooms have been changed since, both by them, both in keeping. The joinery has needed nothing.
The first evening, we sat in the drawing room with no lamps on and watched the wall change colour for an hour. That was the brief, and they heard it.