This London Flat Has All the Grandeur of an English Country Estate

More often than not, interior designers rarely consider a project—especially their own home—”done.” Cindy Leveson, though, is an exception. After nearly 40 years in her London home, she admits she’s finished changing anything. “It’s so comfortable, and it’s full of things that [my husband] John and I love,” she starts. “People ask, ‘Do you upgrade things?’ My response is: I’ve done it all, and I don’t want to change anything anymore.” Fair enough! When you take a look around, you can understand why.

The driving force behind her design is comfort. “I don’t like things looking overly decorated,” Leveson notes. “I don’t want people to come into a room and feel they can’t sit down because it’s going to ruin the cushions. Rather, I want people to come in and be able to throw themselves on a sofa, put their feet up, and not be precious about it.” Luckily, her home is as comfy as it is beautiful.

Keep reading to discover the collected magic that unfolds across every nook and cranny in her London flat.

Photos by Rachael Smith

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A Lifetime of Collecting, All in One Room

The drawing room is one of the most special spaces in the whole home, mostly because it’s full of meaningful pieces—including the sofa, which she inherited from her father—from all over the place that somehow come together to create an incredibly elegant oasis. The art is also a collection Leveson amassed over the course of many years and from various people and places. “The pictures are all collected with some given, and some bought,” she notes. There are also family pictures featuring her great-great-grandfather, Erskine Nicol, who was an artist. “I’ve got lots of his things around the flat.”

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Gallery Walls of a Life Well Lived

Interestingly enough, Leveson’s home features not one but two staircases that lead to the upper level because the flat itself is actually two apartments she converted into one. “This staircase going upstairs is quite nice because we’ve got two, because we’ve got two flats and two staircases.” Luckily, she and her husband have collected enough art over the course of their lifetimes to create meaningful gallery walls.

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A Little Bit of the Country in London

Technically, the Leveson family is in London, but after knocking down a wall in the primary bedroom, it has an undeniable country feel to it, and that was precisely the point. “It’s east-west facing, which couldn’t be nicer. You have the sun, when it’s out, all day, and it’s just lovely,” Leveson says. As beautiful as the rest of the flat may be, for Leveson, it’s all about the bedroom. “Home means to me I’m always relieved to get into my own bed,” she admits. “I’m safe. It’s like a cocoon coming home. However nice a time you’ve had, to get home, get into bed that night is always bliss. Nothing is more comfortable than your own bed. Or it shouldn’t be.” All good points.

Obvious coziness aside, what sets the mood of this space is, no doubt, the fabric, which is Colefax & Fowler. “They still do it in the cream background with a more turquoise blue, but the denim one they discontinued, which I think is such a shame,” Leveson laments. The same fabric creates the canopy above her bed.

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A Fresh Chapter in Blue

This kitchen may be blue, but there’s nothing somber about it, especially because it is a relatively new design in the old home. “When a drawer fell off at the end of last year, that signaled it was the time to redecorate,” says Leveson. Her starting point? Wallpaper, something she’s always wanted to try in a kitchen. This one is Antoinette Poisson. “Everyone says, ‘Are you mad, putting that in the kitchen?’ I said, ‘Probably,’ but I found this wonderful stuff that everybody apart from me seemed to know about, called decorator’s varnish.” It basically makes the wallpaper invincible.

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An Ode to Old-World Elegance

This certainly feels like a dining room you’d see in an old country house. Perhaps because of the sumptuous pink walls, the collection of unique china, or the collection of oil paintings. “The paintings in here are interesting because this one in the middle [in the photo on the left] is by Sir Arthur Cope, and it’s of John’s grandfather,” she says. “And it was the sketch before he did the picture, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery.”

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A Study With No Desk

This, Leveson admits, is the room in which they spend the most time. “We call it a study, but it isn’t really a study. It doesn’t even have a desk.” It does, however, have a fair amount of art and books.