At home with...Earl of East

The duo behind the fragrance brand have made a Leyton new-build their sanctuary

- OLIVIA LIDBURY

New-builds have a reputation for being bland and boxy, but for Paul Firmin and Niko Dafkos, they were thrilled to be the first ones through the door of their townhouse in east London. “The fact that you can make it your own, and that everything — from the windows to the boiler — is brand new, is no bad thing,” says Dafkos, who is from Germany.

Partners both in work and life, the founders of homewares retailer and fragrance brand Earl of East bought the property from the developer nine years ago and persuaded the company to cover the stamp duty. Fatigued from months of viewing microscopic flats in more salubrious neighbourhoods such as London Fields, where they met 13 years ago, they settled on Leyton.

“We thought it could be somewhere that comes up, like Clapton did, and we liked the neighbourhood feel,” says Firmin, who grew up in the north-east. Indeed, the area has since gentrified with wine bars and vintage shops, and fellow creative types such as magazine editors and taste-makers moving in.

The house itself is sensibly proportioned and set over three floors; unlike the Victorian terraces nearby, the wide kitchen was always intended for both cooking and dining in. In the first year they quickly filled it with inexpensive Ikea pieces to get the four bedrooms furnished. But over time they’ve swapped these out for more considered finds, such as a bench salvaged from a Paris roadside which they carried back on the Eurostar, and the odd bespoke splurge. The dining table, which is intentionally low to work with the woven day bed (a cult Ikea design), was a custom creation by Fred Rigby. “I like the mix of the high and the low,” says Firmin of his taste.