British designer Beth Dadswell of Imperfect Interiors was first hired by her clients to personalize a new construction apartment, located near the River Thames, for their daughter. Knowing full well it was a temporary space for her, they’d soon utilize it as their primary London pied-à-terre and wanted the designer to update it to match their personal style. It’s a crisp, modern space with a dose of that luxurious English charm we love. Think striking marble, a deep color palette, and plenty of bronze. Beth tells us more.

Hi Beth! First, for those of us stateside, we’d love to know a bit about the location of this home.
This 3-bedroom apartment is located in Chelsea Creek, which is an area that contains several smart new apartment blocks near the River Thames in Central London. It is all one floor and has an amazing amount of lateral living space & light which is unusual in London. My clients were the first people to own it, and it had been designed in a typically neutral ‘developer’ style.  

Your clients essentially bought this as a pied-á-terre, correct?
My clients live overseas and bought the property so that they could spend more time in London with their grown-up children who live there. They initially engaged me to help their daughter to furnish it as she was the first permanent occupant, and we had a lot of fun picking out furniture and decoration that suited her sociable lifestyle. When she moved out, they asked me to give it a refresh, and to furnish and decorate it in a more grown-up style so that they could use it as their London base. They wanted to use lots of luxurious, tactile fabrics in an understated color palette.

How would you describe the updated aesthetic of the home?
Clean, elegant & contemporary with a focus on luxurious finishes & materials. My clients like a very subtle color palette, so the challenge for me was to inject warmth & modernity without using color! I usually work on traditional period properties with clients that like color & pattern, so this was a real change for me, and I enjoyed working on a different scale to a very different brief. 

Like many things right now, the timing of this project was, well, unique. How long did it take?
We started work on this project in February 2020–just before Covid was first discovered and before the first UK lockdown. This shutdown meant that my client was unable to visit for meetings for the rest of the project, so it was all done via email. Although this process worked well for us, the lockdown did cause issues with items being delayed and meant that the project took much longer than we initially thought. Due to the ban on travel, this didn’t cause a problem for my clients as they weren’t able to visit anyway, but I know that they are really looking forward to finally being able to come & see the finished results!  

Take a tour (with design insight from Beth!) in the slideshow.