Our top houses of 2021: Angelica Squire's bold and ebullient take on a Victorian terrace

"I just love getting hold of a complete wreck and making it into what I want," says interior designer Angelica Squire, whose London house is a perfect expression of her personal style and the way she lives. The Victorian terrace in Shepherd's Bush where she lives with her husband and three small children is stylish, colourful and eminently practical, well able to cope with the demands of an energetic family without losing any of its sense of sophistication.

Having worked in magazines for almost a decade, Angelica came to interior design five years ago. "My mother was an interior designer, so I always had a bit of a yearning for that career," she says. Following a course at the Inchbald School of Design, she went to work for Fran Hickman, and started a solo studio after having her first child. It's been a rapid progression, but Studio Squire is quickly gaining a reputation for fun, youthful interiors that combine traditional bones with unconventional details. "I’m interested in mixing things up," she says. "It's an enjoyable process to put expensive finds together with things I've found on Ebay. I have clients where the budget has to be quite disciplined, and I like that challenge."

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As they embarked on a gut renovation of the house, Angelica and her husband, whose career in property and development has enabled him to work frequently with her on projects, collaborated with architect Jonathan Harvey (of Holland Harvey) on expanding the house's footprint. They extended it at the back and dug into the basement, and also created more rooms in the loft. Although it was a long build, it went according to plan, and Angelica was able to set about making it into the perfect home for her young family. "It was important to avoid it feeling precious," she explains, "and I didn’t want areas that were just for kid and others that were just for grownups." This philosophy is on display in the new basement, which functions both as a playroom for the children and a bar and entertaining area for the adults. It's a striking space, cleverly lit in a way that is both glamorous and playful, with deep moody colours and comfortable furniture. It could feel cut off from the rest of the house, but Angelica has avoided this by creating a void in the middle of the house that stretches up from the basement through to the sitting room.

The deep tones of the basement give way to lighter, airier colours on the ground floor, a particularly airy space, with a charming pink kitchen and dining area opening up into the sitting room at the back. The extension into the garden, painted in a fresh off-white, ends in a wall of taupe Crittall windows and seems to transition seamlessly into the garden. The rich green of the sofa, botanical prints on the walls, and some rather impressive houseplants all contribute to the garden-room atmosphere in this end of the house. Nothing is too heavy here, even the wide pine fireplace, inspired by the similar style in Keith McNally's former Notting Hill house. Despite this commitment to airiness, at no point did Angelica resort to the simple expedient of painting anything white. Even the ceilings are pale pastels, to avoid the harshness of plain white.

The same inventive use of colour continues on the upper floors; the stairwell is painted in a rich olive green, as is Angelica's office on the landing, which has no door in order to keep it from feeling cut off from the rest of the house. Up another small flight of stairs is the main bedroom and its connected bathroom, which was converted from a bedroom to allow for lots of space. Evident throughout these spaces is Angelica's clever way with joinery. Outside the bedroom door are bookshelves set into the wall on each side, their interiors painted in bright orange to help them stand out. A wall of wardrobes provides storage at one end of the bedroom, and more smart cupboards line the transitional space between bedroom and bathroom, where the calmer decoration of the former gives way to an intensely dramatic scheme of pink marble and deep blue woodwork.

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The idea behind this house was to make it a true family space, and according to Angelica, it very much works that way. Even the baby's room, with its rich blue gloss paint and boucle-covered armchair, oozes sophistication. Doors and barriers have been kept to a minimum, so that no space is off-limits, and it's easy to transition from one to another, and to be as comfortable in one as in another. The family are just as frequently to be found hanging out in the glamorous surrounds of their bar-playroom as they are in the open spaces of their kitchen and sitting room, and long may it continue.

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