Louise Roe decorates
Louise Roe decorates her london home, former fashion journalist and founder of lifestyle brand Sharland England, is seeing red; as in wall-paint red.
‘Sang de Boeuf by Edward Bulmer Natural Paint is my all-time favourite,’ she says of the reddish-brown shade covering the walls of her five-bedroom London townhouse. ‘[It] works beautifully in any light.’
The tablecloth, tableware and rattan pieces on Louise’s antique refectory table are from her brand sharland-england.com. She bought the Windsor chairs on gumtree.com
Time was when red flooring was more the 43-year-old’s thing. Covering the red carpet for US broadcaster NBC’s Access Hollywood, Roe once gave Gwyneth Paltrow a quiz on cockney rhyming slang (which Gwynnie aced, incidentally). On another occasion she received an excited hug from Julia Roberts outside the Emmys (Roe later discovered that the actress was a fan of her show).
The walls are painted in Sang de Boeuf by edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk. she says, ‘Lit with lamps and candlelight it becomes a rich, cosy, enveloping hue’ as Louise Roe decorates for Christmas.
While still working in television stateside, Roe met TV director Mackenzie Hunkin (also British) and the two were married in 2016. Their first daughter, Honor, was born in 2018, but becoming a mum made Roe homesick. ‘We’d had such a great time in Los Angeles – there was so much opportunity, and the weather was great – but it was all go. After Honor was born we both began missing family in England.’
The barley-twist side table, which doubles as a bijou bar, was found at an antiques fair in Alexandra Palace,
North London
So, after 11 years in LA, Roe returned home and – as if to underline her reclaimed Britishness – bought and restored a Georgian rectory. ‘Traditionally English’ is the way she describes the look of the Buckinghamshire property once she had put her stamp on it.
However, it wasn’t long before the couple decided that rural living wasn’t for them. ‘I was pregnant with our second daughter Inès, and Mackenzie and I had one of those moments where we just looked at each other and I said, “I think we’ve got a few more years of us in London.”’
The Christmas tree is decorated in handmade decorations from sharland-england.com by Louise Roe decorates. The footstool, by the bespoke footstool company.co.uk, is covered in ticking stripes by pennymorrison.com
Within a matter of months, the rectory was sold, and by 2021 the couple had bought a Victorian townhouse in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood of London. ‘We renovated the property in just three months,’ says Roe. ‘Structurally, there was nothing to do – it was just a case of updating and decorating the place. I was about eight months pregnant when the renovations started, and in nesting mode. I felt a bit invincible, so I was up ladders with this big bump.’
Louise Roe decorates sourced handcrafted marbled tableware from Bulgaria for her brand. The scallop-edged rattan tray is also by Sharland England
Repurposing curtains, lights and furniture from the rectory helped speed the project along, as did the fact that she had already tested out her wall colour (the aforementioned favourite Sang de Boeuf) back in Buckinghamshire.
The renovation also proved inspirational, informing Louise Roe decorates decision to launch her own interiors brand. Her website cites ‘all things rattan’ as a major source of ideas, but its ceramics are also very much in evidence at her London home.
‘I used to collect shoes,’ she says of her former incarnation as a fashion journalist. ‘Now it’s plates!’