If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, says interior designer Phoebe Hollond. The eight-year renovation of her London home is testament to her philosophy, writes Jessica Jonzen
THE SOPHISTICATED AND LAYERED KITCHEN DINING ROOM IN THE BASEMENT EXTENSION, FEATURING A MURANO GLASS CHANDELIER AND VERSAILLES WOOD FLOORING
There is a particular seriousness with which Phoebe Hollond approaches even the smallest of tasks. When she explains her method for making roast potatoes – par-boiled, then meticulously scratched on every surface before being plunged into a fiercely hot pan of goose fat, butter and oil – it feels less like a culinary tip and more like a manifesto. “It takes forever, but it’s worth it,” she says. It is an approach that runs through her work as an interior designer, and through the London home she has been carefully renovating since 2017.
Phoebe and her husband bought the tall, three-storey Victorian terrace in Shepherd’s Bush as their first proper home together. It came with a basement that had once served as a photography studio. “It was honestly like a dungeon,” she says. “Concrete floors, white walls, no natural light. We barely went down there.” Like much of the house, it had been stripped of its original architectural detail with no cornicing, no sense of history left intact. While that can be heartbreaking for a designer, Phoebe saw possibility.
“It’s always nice when a house already has the architectural bones, because it means that it has a soul,” she says. “But if they’ve been removed by a developer, you have to work extra hard to breathe life and energy back into a place. But then on the flip side of that, it means that you’re also freed from having to be historically correct.” In her own home, she allowed herself that freedom. Classical Greek cornicing sits comfortably in the bedroom; ornate Georgian detailing appears upstairs in her studio. Rather than trying to recreate a single period, Phoebe embraced a more layered approach. “I liked the idea that you’re walking through different eras as you move through the house. Every room feels distinct.”
Phoebe rejects the oft-repeated idea that a home must “flow” seamlessly from room to room. “Why are we all obsessed with flow?” she asks. “I don’t believe in it.” Instead, Phoebe believes each room should serve its purpose. Her kitchen is energetic and social; her snug is deliberately cosy, a place to retreat. “I don’t want to feel energised in my snug; I want to feel slobby.” Personality, not uniformity, is what brings a home to life.
PHOEBE’S BEDROOM, FEATURING AN ARMCHAIR UPHOLSTERED IN BEATA HEUMAN’S ‘PALM DROP’ FABRIC
This is is also the result of renovating room by room over eight years due to budget, rather than all at once. The first space she tackled was her bedroom, which felt cold, soulless and wholly uninviting when they moved in. Practical concerns played a role (it lacked storage entirely )but more than anything, Phoebe needed a space that felt like them. Grey fitted carpets were lifted to reveal original floorboards, and golden grass-cloth walls, a blue painted ceiling and a Pierre Frey Le Manach headboard created a room that feels cocooning and calm. “That space had the biggest transformation from something that felt very modern and stark to now feeling unbelievably cosy and bohemian. It doesn’t feel like London in there at all,” she says. “It’s very serene.”
At the time, Phoebe was working for Beata Heuman, with whom she would spend eight formative years. That influence can be felt in the boldness of her choices – and occasionally, in the compromises. One early decision to paint the cabinetry in their bedroom in a vivid mix of bubblegum pink and lipstick red caused some consternation at home. “My husband said it reminded him of blood and flesh,” she laughs. “I didn’t see that at all.” The cabinetry was duly repainted in a more restrained navy blue, but the instinct to inject her work with playfulness and colour never left.
The house itself has evolved slowly, room by room, guided as much by budget as by instinct. After the bedroom came the living room, the snug, and what is now Phoebe’s study. Structural changes followed: the entrance hall was widened by stealing space from the snug, making the arrival into the house feel more generous. Walls in the snug were traditionally upholstered with battens, wadding and fabric applied by hand, creating a deep, enveloping warmth. “If you’re going to do something like that,” Phoebe says, “you do it properly.”
THE SNUG, WHICH WAS REDUCED IN SIZE BY 30CM TO CREATE A LARGER ENTRANCE HALL, TRADITIONALLY UPHOLSTERED IN A STRIPED FABRIC BY CLAREMONT WITH LEMON YELLOW PIPING. “I MAY ADD SOME TASSELS TO THE SCALLOPS,” SAYS PHOEBE
That insistence on craft reflects her training. After studying philosophy at King’s College London, Phoebe worked in creative advertising before completing a course at KLC School of Design. Her break came in 2015, when she joined Beata Heuman – then working from her in-laws’ basement. “It was back in the days when we all used Facebook and I saw we had a mutual contact so I asked for an introduction and she hired me on the spot,” Phoebe recalls. “It was so lucky.” Under Beata, she learned the value of bespoke design: kitchens, furniture and joinery designed from scratch, not pulled from catalogues. “A house can be truly unique,” she says. “That’s something I carried forward.”
Her approach is academic, rooted in research, history and close observation. She cites the legendary Parisian designer Madeleine Castaing as another key influence, drawn to her philosophy of mixing periods and styles to avoid stagnation. “Mixing allows you to avoid reconstruction. It injects life into grouping,” Phoebe quotes from Madeleine. It’s an idea she applies intuitively, drawing on historical references without being constrained by them.
Designing her own home, Phoebe admits, proved harder than working for clients. “With clients, you can take more risks as you’re not living in it. But with your own space, you’re constantly asking yourself how it will make you feel.” It’s an insight that speaks to her emotional intelligence as a designer. She describes herself as very good at reading people: “often better than reading myself!” she jokes.
Phoebe grew up in West London, in a home that was “wild and joyful.” Designed in the 1990s by Jenny Armit – now based in Mexico – the family home was drenched in colour. Bright peaches, vivid greens, pinks and Californian-Mexican influences filled every inch. “My parents were not afraid of colour at all,” she says. “It really was something else” As one of four siblings, Phoebe remembers a house full of life, cluttered with objects, unapologetically lived in.
PHOEBE HOLLOND IN HER KITCHEN
That freedom extended to her own childhood bedroom. At just ten years old, she was allowed to choose a fuchsia pink velvet four-poster bed and luminous lilac walls. “I still don’t know why they let me do it,” she laughs. Phoebe grew up regarding homes as places for expression rather than perfection. That unprecious approach remains central to Phoebe’s philosophy today. She embraces wear and tear, letting furniture age and gather stories – including the Serpentine high gloss dining table she designed for her kitchen. “You live in a home,” she says simply. “Things will scuff, and that’s life.” With her toddler daughter and pet Labrador, control is neither realistic nor desirable. “If you try to control everything, you end up feeling morbid. Spaces are meant to be lived in.”
In 2023 – a year she describes as “completely mad” – Phoebe launched her own practice, Studio Hollond, welcomed her daughter Alba, and undertook the most ambitious phase of the renovation: moving the kitchen from a tiny galley on the first floor into the basement and extending into the garden. Half the garden was sacrificed to create a light-filled kitchen-dining space, complete with lanterns and trellis detailing inspired by Versailles. A playroom sits alongside, allowing Phoebe to cook while keeping an eye on her daughter. Notably, there is no television downstairs. “It’s depressing when the nicest floor of the house goes unused,” she says. Instead, the raised ground floor remains the heart of family life.
Today, the house feels complete – but it is still evolving. The hallway was recently redecorated in an energetic wallpaper of Phoebe’s own design (she launched her fabric and wallpaper collection in 2025.) Inspired by a ceramic she saw in the V&A archive dating from the 1500s, ‘Strawberry Jazz’ was originally meant to be a “wild, organic design” but when it wasn;t working, Phoebe applied hand painted gingham-esque lines, creating a geometic design which is at once wild and considered. “The walls aren’t straight, so then the lines don’t look straight so it’s quite trippy and mesmerising. It really does look crazy but I love it.” Phoebe dreams of a future loft conversion to create a private sanctuary for her and her husband, complete with Juliet balcony and roll-top bath in the bedroom. Like everything else, it will be considered, researched and done properly.
As for her work with clients, Phoebe is clear: the relationship comes first. She spends time understanding how people live, how they move through their homes, what they need emotionally as much as practically. Into that understanding, she weaves her own joyful, colourful, layered sensibility. “I don’t think I’d ever do a sad interior,” she laughs. And looking around her home, it’s hard to imagine she ever could.
THE ENTRANCE HALL, WHICH WAS EXTENDED BY 30CM, DECORATED IN ‘STRAWBERRY JAZZ’ WALLPAPER BY STUDIO HOLLOND
THE ORIGINAL GALLEY KITCHEN OF THE ENTRANCE HALL HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO A GUEST LOO, WITH A UTILITY ROOM BEHIND THE DAMASK CURTAIN. PHOEBE FOUND THE ROUND STAINED GLASS WINDOW AT FROME RECLAMATION AND HAD A HOLD PUNCHED THROUGH THE WALL TO ACCOMMODATE IT
THE SNUG, WITH WALLS TRADITIONALLY UPHOLSTERED WITH BATTENS AND WADDING. THE TELEVISION IS BOXED IN AND HIDDEN BY A DECORATIVE STICKER, A TRICK PHOEBE LEARNED FROM HER FORMER BOSS BEATA HEUMAN
PHOEBE’S STUDY, DECORATED WITH ORNATE GEORGIAN CORNICING. WHILE NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FOR THE 1860’S TERRACED HOUSE, PHOEBE ENJOYS FEELING AS THOUGH SHE IS MOVING THROUGH DIFFERENT ERAS AS SHE MOVES THROUGH THE HOUSE
PHOEBE INVESTED HER BUDGET INTO THE VERSAILLES FLOORING AND THE QUARTZ WORKTOP, SAVING MONEY BY HAVING HER CONTRACTOR MAKE THE CABINETS FROM PAINTED MDF
THE FORMERLY DARK AND DERELICT BASEMENT WAS TRANSFORMED BY EXTENDING IT INTO HALF OF THE GARDEN, AND THE ADDITION OF TWO CEILING LANTERNS, DECORATED WITH TRELLIS TO SOFTEN THE VOID. PHOEBE DESIGNED THE ‘SERPENTINE’ DINING TABLE ESPECIALLY FOR THE SPACE AND CAN MAKE IT TO ORDER IN ANY COLOUR FOR CLIENTS
PHOEBE’S BEDROOM – THE FIRST ROOM SHE RENOVATED – FEATURES CLASSICAL GREEK-INSPIRED CORNICING, GOLDEN GRASS-CLOTH WALLPAPER AND A SERENE BLUE-PAINTED CEILING
THE FAMILY BATHROOM, FEATURING A BLIND MADE WITH NICKY HASLAM’S ‘BALCONY STRIPE’ FABRIC. ART AND RUGS ADD WARMTH AND INTEREST AND PREVENT THE SPACE FEELING STERILE
PHOEBE’S DAUGHTER ALBA’S NURSERY, DECORATED WITH ‘BAIES’ WALLPAPER BY ANTOINETTE POISSON. THE WARDROBE CAME FROM VINTERIOR AND PHOEBE COMMISSIONED A DECORATIVE ARTIST TO PAINT IT
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