London's Mayfair may be the most haute and high-end address on the British Monopoly board, but when Irene Gunter of Gunter & Co was given (relatively) free rein to work on this apartment, she wanted to relax the space a little. To soften it, to make it like the visual equivalent of your shoulders dropping as you exhale. "I wanted to give the apartment a sense of summer," Irene says, which explains why this light-filled space feels just as fresh as it does.
A show apartment in the new 60 Curzon development, Irene used all the design tricks that she'd always suggest as ways to add personality: curves, color, and conviviality. "Because it's an Art Deco building, the curves felt very natural here," she adds, of the curved banquette seating, curved joinery, and curved edges to the main bedroom's headboard.
And with no direct client to cater to, this apartment is a fascinating glimpse into the true personal taste of one of Livingetc's favorite designers. "This is how I would live," Irene says. "The palette is warm, light-filled, and feels like the sun is hitting you. The colors we chose are like those you'd see on an Italian ice-cream stand, with pinks and greens and yellows, slightly adapted to make them more suitable for a typical gloomy British day. And the feeling is very contemporary."
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Wallpaper by Phillip Jeffries. The burl wood console is a bespoke Gunter & Co design, and the amp is from Palefire.
And it all starts with an enriching sunset effect, an ombre wallpaper wrapping the entryway as the first thing you see on entering the two-bedroom apartment. "I felt this would be so unexpected, a real pop of color that is a contrast to the building's more neutral common areas," Irene Gunter says. "It's a way to move you from that area and connect you to the soft and pretty colors you're about to see in the rest of the home."
Custom-designed travertine dining table, another Gunter & Co bespoke design. Hand-applied ribbon detailing by Schumacher.
The dining room is an even softer take on those Italian summer colors — the green of the chairs like the creamy pistachio of a gelato. But perhaps the smartest detail is actually the fabric strips that break up the wallpaper, lending the character of wall paneling.
"I wanted to accentuate the ceiling height, to give a sense of proportion to the space," Irene explains. "And every striped wallpaper is very repetitive and would feel out of place in this modern setting, so I thought about how I could create an irregular striped pattern that didn't dominate."
Look closely, and you'll spot that it's done with fabric braiding, another way to accentuate the soft detailing. "It's not a DIY job," Irene warns. "Cut these strips yourself, and they'll fray — they need to be properly stitched."
The corner window seat is another Gunter & Co bespoke design, upholstered in Lelievre.
Other designers might have added a sculpture to the potentially tricky curved window, but Irene thought about what she'd want were she to live here. "I'd want a window seat I could sit on and gaze down on the finery of Mayfair happening outside," she says of her custom-designed curved banquette seating.
"We wanted a very generous sofa that anchored the space, gave you an option of sitting there with seven friends, and ensured everyone is comfortable," Irene says of her other design choices. She kept the fabric creamy and pale — you can just see the soft yellow creeping into shot in the picture above. "Because the darker you go on a sofa, the bigger it looks," Irene says. "And then it dominates the room like a block."
The curved motif continues on the joinery throughout the home.
The curved sheving unit behind the yellow sofa was another custom Gunter design, and the rounded edges help make the pieces displayed on the shelves feel enclosed, curated, like they're on a stage rather than a shelf. It turns them into treasures.
The cabinets beneath were Irene's "first foray into moire," a silk fabric that takes on a woodgrain-like effect thanks to the way in which it's heat-pressed.
Irene chose this more unusual shape for the headboard design: "This felt more organic than an arch would have done," she says.
"This room is at a slight angle, and is in a wedge shape, so we wanted to introduce a curved sense to it, to tie in the other curved elements in the home," Irene explains of her winged headboard design in the bedroom, with its dips and swooshes.
The marquetry panels on the wardrobes are by Arte.
And another design thread — the fabric used for the pink bolster pillow appears again as the inlay on the dressing table used in the dressing room. Alongside the fabric inlay, wood marquetry by Arte was chosen for the wardrobe panels.
"It's super sumptuous," Irene says. "And being wood instead of fabric, it has a little bit more of a cool edge, yet those colors are so soft it still helps create a space you want to retreat to."
The scale of the wallpaper pattern is an often overlooked detail, says Irene.
The guest bedroom had to double — in Irene's mind — as both a place guests could sleep or kids could use, so the wallpaper needed to be playful but not too childish.
"With wallpaper, people forget to think about the scale," Irene says. "If it's too large scale, you don't always see it in a bedroom, as much of it is hidden by things like a big bed. So go for smaller patterns instead, which are easier to understand even when much of it is hidden."
Irene is known for creating cleverly elevated but supremely liveable spaces for her clients, so it's interesting to see where her imagination takes her when she's creating a space she might like to live in herself.
"This was all for me, but in another life, where I don't have kids, and I live in the center of town," Irene says. "It's all about being convivial, about choosing colors that make you feel both warm and relaxed, a retreat that's almost like being on holiday."
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