Guiding light
A Copenhagen apartment showcases and celebrates heritage elements and the mood-enhancing power of illumination in all its forms.
For an illustration of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling fable, it’s hard to go past this elegant apartment in leafy Østerbro, Copenhagen, a mere suburb away from where the master storyteller once lived. It stood empty and unloved for a year until Christian Klinge, owner of creative branding agency Entry Global, and his partner Sarah Fitzgerald, a midwife, sensed its potential and transformed it into a graceful swan. Its luminescent, French-inspired interiors, a celebration of lighting in all its forms, came about through their grand vision and sheer hard work, with the couple doing much of the renovating themselves.
When the pair discovered this third-floor apartment, “it was drab and in poor condition with no charm”, Klinge says. “And the floor plan wasn’t ideal for families, with a small kitchen tucked away at one end of the apartment.” But the couple was determined. “We bargained for four months, as we could see its amazing potential.”
What Klinge and Fitzgerald saw, and others had easily dismissed, was the apartment’s capacious 213-square-metre floor area within a historic 1909 building. The couple recognised it as romantic and Parisian in its inspiration, with soaring ceilings, sinuously ornate mouldings and sweeping curved windows. (“They made me know right away that here I will stay,” Fitzgerald says.) They also appreciated its herringbone parquetry and its potential for four bedrooms for the pair, their daughter, Alberte, now 13, and their then-daughter-to-come, Barbara, now one.
After picking up the keys in December 2017, the couple spent the next six months feverishly renovating. The most pressing change was shifting the kitchen to the heart of the apartment, to what was once the dining room — a complex move that required new plumbing and an exhaust outlet to the roof. “It was an absolute must to create a kitchen where there is room for movement and that serves the needs of a family,” Fitzgerald says.
The couple replaced the old kitchen with a child’s bedroom, creating four bedrooms in a wing at one end of the apartment. The living areas were grouped at the other end, in a corner overlooking a quiet, tree-lined street. And although the duo eschewed an open plan in favour of discrete spaces, openings were widened to ensure sightlines and a sense of flow.
Finishes and fittings celebrate the couple’s love of sensuous shapes and textures, overlaid with a je ne sais quoi. Lacquered herringbone parquetry was stripped back and limewashed while linoleum and floating floors were pulled up to expose the patina of the original boards. Klinge removed false ceilings and restored mouldings that had fallen victim to previous makeovers, with the couple keen to emphasise those decorative features that had first wooed them. Similarly, they lovingly restored the fabulous curved windows.
Unable to find anything else suitable and being ever resourceful, Klinge and Fitzgerald built wicker cabinets evoking a French ambience to hide the stark radiators — 19 in all, an indication of Copenhagen and its bitter winters. The cabinetry perfectly complements the patterned wallpaper in the powder room, the first item they bought and the starting point for decorating the apartment.
“When I saw the wallpaper, I got an instant sense of a small French boutique hotel, where everything is carefully selected to create mood, which is paramount when it comes to my home,” Fitzgerald says. “The decor is classic Parisian elegance but with a Nordic sense of simplicity and quality.”
“And with dusky Nordic tones,” adds Klinge. “All the colours — especially the woods — have a cool, bluish tint to the white.” Delicate pink, eau de Nil and white, warmed by timber tones, take their cues from the small room just beside the front door.
Though they were partners in the project, “Sarah is the visionary,” Klinge says. “She has a talent for making things come together and will show me a picture on Instagram of how curtains fall in a certain way or the effect a light will have.”
Fitzgerald’s passion for design was prompted by her fascination for the Thonet chairs around the dining table in her childhood home. “Since then, I have always had an element of curved wood and wicker as part of my decor,” she says. Thonet chairs now feature here, too, alongside shapely pieces by Hans J Wegner and other luminaries.
Lighting, in the beguiling shapes of chandeliers and sculptural floor lamps, brings glamour, a sense of individuality and that mood that’s so vital to Fitzgerald. “We had endless conversations around light and how timbers, ceramics and stones behave in different light,” she says. “Light sources have become our thing: lamps can hardly get too wild, as they fulfil our love of organic shapes and embrace other elements in the room.”
Now that they are writing their own enchanted story in their reborn home, the duo agree that the kitchen is their favourite space. “We spend most of our time in there,” Klinge says. “We included an island, with no sink or cooktop, so we could all gather there as a family — working, preparing food or just playing.”
Its prime position allows vantage points from this room to the next, offering fresh perspectives on their home that change with the light. “We can sit at the table and have a conversation with the kids in different rooms. That flow, combined with the high ceilings, gives a great feeling of space,” Klinge says. “And you can see how all the rooms match up so beautifully.” Meanwhile, a print called The Swan adorns their living room. What could be more appropriate?
“The decor is classic Parisian elegance but with a Nordic sense of simplicity and quality” SARAH FITZGERALD