Built around a deep modular sofa and a curated art wall, this Hampstead family lounge weaves warm terracotta textiles through a chalk-white backdrop to create a room that is at once a gallery and a den.
A Room for Everyone
The Davies family — two architects and their three young children — wanted a living room that could absorb the full range of family life without looking like a playroom. The modular sofa was the answer: eight individual sections in a washable natural linen, rearrangeable from a long cinema configuration for Friday movie nights to a loose conversational cluster for weekday evenings with friends.
The sectional’s low profile keeps sightlines open to the garden, where mature plane trees filter Hampstead’s generous light into the room. We kept window treatments to a minimum — simple linen roller blinds in the same chalk-white as the walls — so the trees themselves become the room’s ever-changing backdrop.
The Art Wall
The salon-style art wall opposite the sofa was a collaboration over several months. We sourced works from emerging British painters and printmakers, building a collection that shares a warm mineral palette — ochre, sienna, terracotta, raw umber — without locking into a single style. Thin oak frames unify the group, and the arrangement follows an asymmetric grid that we mapped at full scale on the studio wall before committing a single nail.
Beneath the gallery wall, a low round coffee table in solid English oak holds the room’s only permanent accessories: a stack of architecture monographs, a hand-thrown ceramic bowl, and a terracotta candle. The sisal rug underfoot grounds the seating area and provides the textural counterweight to the smooth plaster walls above.
We wanted our living room to feel lived in from day one — not precious, not untouchable. They gave us exactly that: a room with soul from the moment the last cushion was placed.
Liam Davies