In the Livingetc office, the mood was like when Geri left the Spice Girls. Late last year, Scott Maddux and Jo leGleud, the duo behind Maddux Creative, announced a shock split, ending a creative partnership that had lasted 15 years, seen them appear in our pages countless times, and featured one of their modern home projects on our cover.
Of course, this being the always-friendly interior design industry rather than the tempestuous world of pop, there isn’t much of a story (despite the surprise among our team) — it felt like a natural time to evolve. "We’ve simply gone our own ways to pursue our own creative paths," Scott says, as he launches a new design studio under his full name, Scott Maddux, while Jo leGleud is taking on renovation projects under her own name, too.
"We saw the green mirror on a stand at the PAD art fair, and it was a wonderful find," says Scott.
The pair were incredibly influential in how they so effortlessly decorate with color, creating projects that read as dazzling bouquets, each room unfurling like a variegated rose, with hues layered together as delicately as petals. Happily, that creative spirit has continued into their last joint project, working on a historic townhouse in a conservation area in west London.
We love a nest of tables, and this burl option from M&S is as affordable as it is chic.
"The room is two L-shapes – this banquette area, which adjoins the living room, made the best use of one of them," Scott says.
The jaunty chartreuse-green of the kitchen diner is happy-making — get it from Edward Bulmer.
"This was a complicated space as it had the extension, so it wasn’t centered," says Scott. "Moving the island off-centre and lining it up with the crosses in the floor pattern was the only way to make it work."
"We talked a lot about color, and the owners wanted to create a family home that was filled with joy," says Scott. "As the project went on, they got braver and braver about what they would let us do — and we have created a home that has personality shining through it."
"I’d seen this purple on the wall of a gallery and knew we had to use it here too," says Scott.
The scheme crosses eras and styles. "It stops a home looking like a showroom when you pair the unexpected," says Scott.
And it’s true. The moody purple entryway leads to a pink-and-green kitchen, a chartreuse living room with an orange couch, a dusky pink lounge with a watermelon sofa, then up to bedrooms in dark blue, red, and yellow. "Every aspect of this home is joyful," Scott says. "You walk around it with a smile on your face."
"For the smaller rooms, I felt they could take bolder color, with less pastels than the bigger spaces," says Scott.
"Due to spatial issues, the bath had to go in the middle of the room, and we thought that it would be better enclosed in the glass partition with the shower than with the toilet," Scott says. "The result is very cocooning."
But this isn’t just color for color’s sake. There are details here that make all the difference, from the wallpaper inside the kitchen's skylight, which so smartly fills an empty space, it’s hard to believe everyone doesn’t do it (though, Scott says — "don’t try this at home folks, it was really, really hard" — so perhaps that’s why), to the unexpected glass bubble around the bath and shower in the main suite, which has the dual purpose of sectioning off the toilet and making the bathing area feel cocooned.
"The color here was a nod to the house’s Victorian heritage and the owner’s own Indian background," Scott says. "There are a lot of aesthetic similarities between the two."
We love this rug as an inexpensive alternative to the floral design from Sinclair Till in the bedroom above.
Just off the main bedroom is this sumptuous space, paneled in grasscloth in colors that Scott says are "very flattering".
"The house was a complicated space, being Grade II-listed and having to play home to three kids with a lot of stuff," Scott says. "But through hard work, we created a wonderfully playful sense that permeates the entire home." And that could well be his mission statement for his next era — a studio serious about decor that feels fun.
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