‘God is in the details,’
says Cassandra Ellis, explaining how she renovated the apartment in southwest London she shares with her husband Ed Prichard and dogs Lily and Mr Darcy (so named because he looks like Colin Firth). From painting each cast-iron radiator to sanding the floor herself to achieve the optimal level of ‘batteredness’, Cassandra was dogged in her pursuit of just the right finish, colour and material. For example, she exchanged some 200 emails with the joiner who created her kitchen and drove to the timber yard in Norfolk five times to check the oak for the cabinets was the right colour. ‘I was pushing myself to get this place as perfect as I could,’ she says.
Professional pride explains this drive to some degree – New Zealand-born Cassandra is an interiors stylist and also designs furniture and homeware – but there was an emotional motivation too. ‘Ed and I had lost three of our parents in the preceding few years,’ she says. ‘This place felt like a gift to us. I wanted it to be beautiful in the right sense – not swanky, but somewhere we finally felt at peace and where our dogs would be wagging their tails.’ Creating a home that welcomes, soothes and heals is more important that the pieces in it, or its size, Cassandra argues. ‘It’s not what it looks like that matters, it’s why you are doing it,’ she says. ‘That’s why you get so hung up on those hinges being right.’
Cassandra’s fine eye for detail has given her home a calm, thought-out feel, aided by a pared-back ingredients list of just four key materials – wood floors, marble surfaces, handmade tiles and painted walls. ‘Everything looks much more unified that way,’ she says. ‘Repeat and repeat! It’s simpler and makes the space feel larger and more harmonious.’ Against this backdrop, the couple’s artwork, books and furniture sit beautifully. ‘My husband’s a writer, so when we were working on the design here, we asked, “What’s this about? What’s the story?”’ Cassandra recalls. ‘It all relates back to creating that quiet shell for living and sharing – I don’t want to live with brash or noisy. My mind has enough of that! I don’t want it in my home as well.’
While the apartment is the perfect retreat for the pair, it’s also wonderfully social – intimate dinners or drinks or parties for up to 50 are routine. ‘We don’t have a traditional family set-up, so we thought, “Let’s make this into a positive for everybody”,’ says Cassandra. ‘People love coming to us and I love providing the entertainment. This place gives life to all that.’ The vast entrance hall illuminated by a beautiful roof light is a great example of how the apartment facilitates the fun. ‘When I first saw it, I immediately imagined, “That’s where I’d have a gorgeous man handing out drinks at a party”,’ she says, laughing. ‘And we do that – we get a lovely guy from the local pub to be waiter!’