THE NEW BLOOMSBURY SET

Decorator and architect BEN PENTREATH and husband CHARLIE have turned up the volume on pattern and colour in their eye-poppingly eclectic London home

A peek inside interior decorator Ben Pentreath’s eye-poppingly eclectic home

‘Our flat is in a beautiful building dating from about 1720, once occupied by the Art Workers’ Guild [founded in the 1880s by followers of William Morris], but it has little of the Georgian about it,’ says Ben. When the Guild took over, it converted the upper floors into apartments, and instead of tiny attic windows for servants’ rooms, we have a broad set of french doors facing east over the square. In the morning, the sun streams in. In summer, we throw open the doors and stand looking over the treetops – we imagine that we are in Copenhagen or bohemian New York. London sometimes feels far away.

‘I like to approach the decoration of any house by first letting the building speak. We then introduce our own hopes and desires into the mix. Our Dorset house is all about soft and faded English calm. Here in London the volume is turned up a little. We both love colour and pattern, and against a simple backdrop of grey grasscloth walls and neutral, slubby furniture, I’ve introduced dashes of intense colour and print designed to make the eyes pop. The shifting collection of vibrant cushions speaks not only of colour clashes, but also of trips to Stockholm, Paris and New York. (I always think a cushion makes the nicest souvenir, and is easy to pack for the journey home.)

‘I love interiors that evolve. I am not a believer in rooms remaining fixed in aspic; neither do I believe that it is possible to assemble a room in an instant and for it to feel anything other than like a hotel. Through decorating my own houses, I have realised how much things change over the years. The big structural alterations may last for a long time, but it is fun to shake things up, to move things around, and to make space for a new

picture or pieces of furniture from the auction that you have no room for but couldn’t live without.

‘Two years ago I met my husband Charlie. The relationship brought about a huge shift in my life, but one that felt simultaneously happy and inevitable. There have been changes: here in London, and in Dorset, our homes have come to life because of it. Piles of books, little notes, clutter, postcards tucked on the mantelpiece; all signs that it is not just me at home now.

‘When Charlie moved in one of the first things we did was to redecorate the bedroom, and he picked a fresh bottle-green trellis wallpaper designed by our friend Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain (soane.co.uk) – who introduced the two of us. The room sparkles with colour in the afternoon light.

‘Charlie’s chief joy is flowers, and the flat is never empty of blooms. Every week during the summer, he drives up from Dorset with bucketloads of flowers from the garden: dahlias, roses, sweetpeas, peonies and nasturtiums. In winter, he makes perishingly cold early morning trips to New Covent Garden Market. And so our roof garden in London, which I started but then had neither the time nor energy to nurture, is now productive again, with large planted boxes of potatoes, peas, beans, herbs and salads burgeoning all summer long. The house has never felt so alive.’

benpentreath.com, pentreath-hall.com

A bold ikat lampshade by Melodi Horne (melodihorne.com) and a Pentreath & Hall base offset a series of 19th-century fern prints