Textile designer Orla Kiely’s renovated London Terrace House is punctuated by her distinctive palette and motifs.
Like her line of fashion, housewares, and furniture, Irish-born designer Orla Kiely’s four-story, 3,000-square-foot home in southwestern London, is vibrant, warm, and layered with pattern and color. “I know what I like and what works for me,” she says.
The interiors could be none other than Kiely’s—nearly every room is festooned with her signature prints—yet it’s more than just a one-note samba, thanks to her careful consideration of how each element plays off the others. Kiely honed her eye studying textile design at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and knitwear design at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1997, she established her eponymous company. Now her pieces are available at retailers like HD Buttercup, Target, Nordstrom, and Anthropologie.
Alongside designer Susan Minter and architect Maxim Laroussi, Kiely gently recast the house while keeping the original detailing intact, including the moldings, ceiling roses, and bay windows. “It’s a Victorian house, and we didn’t want to make it into something else,” she says. The team removed walls, clad surfaces, replaced flooring, and incorporated bespoke furnishings of Kiely’s own design. “Sometimes you have people who say, ‘I don’t want to live in my work,’ but, in the end, I love what I do and how it looks—so I’m happy to have it.”
