The most intriguing houses never give themselves away from the outside; they are discrete, offering only some mildly flirtatious clue as to what lies within. The London home of Rose Uniacke is an apposite example – the exterior of the interior designer’s Georgian Revival in Pimlico is almost unremarkable, except for a high side window that, if inspected more closely, reveals a sense of scale, hinting at the glorious proportions within.
Built by the architect George Morgan in 1861 for James Rannie Swinton, a society portraitist, every inch of the sprawling 14,000-square-foot home has received Uniacke’s signature attention to detail; not a light switch is out of place, and nary a stray light cable is to be found.
Across the home’s many rooms, the designer’s taste for soft luxury and almost academic approach to design history, from antiques to modernist marvels, is pleasingly evident. Here, much like at her beloved Pimlico Road shop, the contemporary sits in conversation with a rather British sense of sumptuousness, the results unfathomably grand yet somehow unpretentious, lived in, and entirely enviable.