Sarah Corbett-Winder's home is a playful take on traditional grandeur

'We wanted to create our own little world that absorbs you as soon as you step through the front door,’ says Sarah Corbett-Winder of the northwest London home she shares with her husband, Ned, their three children and two house rabbits, Pip and Percy. Built in the Thirties, the semi-detached house is typical of the area, with a mock-Tudor façade and gabled roof.

It's not in quite as sought-after a postcode as the couple’s previous flat in Shepherd’s Bush, nor does it have the immediate charm of a Georgian or Victorian building. Cross the threshold, however, and a playful, imaginatively conceived interior unfolds, packed full of intriguing details and rich colours that speak of much more exotic climes. There are raw plaster walls, pale pink polished concrete floors, a Moroccan-inspired chunky green-tiled fireplace and sofas upholstered in an artful mismatch of different checked fabrics and velvets.

The couple bought the house at the beginning of 2019, having outgrown their two-bedroom flat. ‘We hadn’t really factored children into the space and there just wasn’t room when Nancy, our second child, arrived,’ says Sarah. After two years of hunting, they finally found a house that had the lateral space they desired, spread across three unusually deep floors, with soaring ceilings and a generous garden. ‘Although the decoration felt tired and cottagey, the bones were good,’ she says. Other than the monochrome floor tiles in the hall and the wooden sitting-room floor, few original features remained, giving Sarah and Ned the licence to create the space they wanted with relatively few constraints.

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Both have an eye for what works – Sarah is a fashion stylist and consultant who has recently launched her own brand, Sarah’s, after a six-year stint at Boden, while Ned is the founder of online lifestyle store Not-Another-Bill, which offers a covetable edit of homewares and personalised gifts. Add to that the fact they had already honed their renovation skills by completely overhauling their flat and they were more than equipped for the challenge. Their previous home had proved to be an unintentional testing ground, which helped them see what they wanted to do differently. ‘It was a bit “on trend” and we got quite bored of it,’ says Ned. ‘We wanted this house to feel classic and grown-up.’

The first task involved reconfiguring the layout of the house to create a space that would stand up to the rigours of family life. On the ground floor, a vast kitchen and dining area was created by knocking down an old conservatory and pushing the extension out by a further three metres, with floor-to-ceiling aubergine-coloured Crittall doors onto the garden. The six-month wait for planning permission for the extension turned out to be an unexpected bonus, giving the couple time to interrogate their plans. They decided to turn what had been three children’s rooms on the top floor into a main bedroom, with a bathroom and a dressing room. They opened up the relatively low ceiling to reveal a beautiful beamed pitched roof that could quite easily be in a country barn. On the first floor, the original main bedroom became a bedroom for their daughter Nancy, and a playroom, with a bedroom for their son Lyon leading off it. ‘We wanted the children to have their own self-contained area,’ says Ned.

The ground floor is a particularly elegant affair, with a sitting room at the front and Sarah’s study smartly sandwiched between this and the kitchen. There are no doors on the ground floor, giving each of the rooms a more open feel. ‘We pushed all the door frames in the house as high as we could, adding little hat pediments to introduce a bit of grandeur,’ explains Ned. Thick cornices, installed throughout, have a similar effect, while mouldings on the sitting-room walls help add a sense of depth. The building work took about six months and was aided by the creative approach of their builders, John Christopher Construction, who, Ned enthuses, ‘never said no and always tried to find a solution’.

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While Ned took charge of the architectural elements, Sarah focused on colours, furniture, fabrics and what she refers to as ‘organised clutter’ – everything from her collection of china dogs to French confit pots. The couple brought a few key pieces with them from the flat, including the wooden bench from William Yeoward now in their bathroom (a wedding present), and the pink high-back chair and set of botanical prints that are in the sitting room. ‘We were conscious of including pieces that meant something to us,’ says Sarah, gesturing to the four-metre-long kitchen table, which is made from a piece of oak from the area of Wales in which Ned grew up. The wall above the table is stacked high with art, which the couple have collected over the years, including a good peppering of works by Ned’s artist mother, Kate Corbett-Winder.