Tour a Notting Hill Home That Bursts With Color
Trust was a prerequisite for Natalia Miyar’s clients in the recent reimagination of their historic Notting Hill home. The growing family “wanted a colorful, country house–style, but smart enough for a city property,” shares Miyar. “And they were open to experimenting with color, texture, pattern—all the things I love.” The AD PRO Directory designer’s delightfully saturated vision remained at the center throughout the project, even when Miyar proposed some particularly daring palettes. “Sometimes, clients can be a little shy about doing a turquoise dining room or a green kitchen, but they were incredibly open to that!”
Indeed the kitchen did turn green, at least in part, and the dining room turquoise—in this classic Grade II–listed house, with generous-for-its-kind proportions, an entryway casts the scene for the rest of the residence. Painted in Farrow & Ball’s deep Inchyra Blue and accented with Phillip Jeffries Chateau Linen wall covering in Versailles Teal, it features a custom colorway of Popham Design tiles—a cheeky diversion from the classical stone-tile floors so often seen underfoot in the neighborhood. “That turquoise and indigo blue set the tone, saying, ‘This house will be a little playful,’” muses Miyar, who runs the London- and Miami-based Natalia Miyar Atelier. “The kitchen and dining room are off the entrances and both feel quite colorful. We wanted that story to start at the entrance.”
Miyar took pains to ensure that even the task-oriented rooms, like the bathrooms and kitchen, didn’t feel ruthlessly functional. “The kitchen had beautiful, ornate ceiling molding, all hidden. I’m a big fan of kitchens that are rooms, not utilitarian spaces, like a lab,” she explains, noting ambient accents like a custom hammered copper hood, travertine countertop, and timber oak island. “They should have the same level of color and complexity as any other room.”
In the dining room, bespoke Pierre Frey curtains frame a view of the garden outside, while Arte’s Paleo design serves as the room’s canvas and marine velvet-clad chairs infuse vibrancy when London’s characteristically moody days turn even drearier. It’s an approach borrowed from an expert source: “Mother Nature is incredibly adventurous in color combinations,” Miyar says. “The green-blue palette feels very appropriate to the United Kingdom. The vision of England as a very green, countryside place is what inspired this.”
Yet the bright teals and deep ceruleans don’t stand alone. “You have to have a bit of a foil,” she explains. “Terra-cotta is a prominent color in London, as is red brick, seen in Victorian architecture.” Those burnt sienna tones offer warmth in the formal living room, where a selection of the family’s own art, including “an enormous piece,” a drawing of the pyramid in front of the Louvre, asserts its presence.
Furthering Miyar’s pursuit of natural inspiration, the primary bedroom was moved to the back of the house to take advantage of the garden-square view, a rarity in London. Delicate rose-tinged walls provide another needed foil. “Calm but not insipid, we found a soft, seashell pink—not baby pink, but quite sophisticated,” Miyar explains of the Phillip Jeffries’s wall covering, Sunset Silk. “She wanted a pink bedroom, but nothing that he would be uncomfortable in. We came up with a good compromise with this wonderful turquoise-blue fabric on the headboard.”
That collaboration and compromise constituted, for Miyar, the best part of the project. “At the heart of it is a wonderful couple,” says Miyar. “And their trust in me—because it really is a bright turquoise dining room!”
